Here’s your weekly Entertainment/Movie/DVD/TV Show round-up! Check it out and leave your thoughts and comments in the replies.
Entertainment Round-Up News And Rumors: 1.With Indiana Jones IV not scheduled to start shooting til June, actor Harrison Ford has time to squeeze in a film project beforehand. The project will be the controversial immigration-themed ensemble drama Crossing Over for the Weinsteins. Scripted and directed by Wayne Kramer , the LA-set drama aims to do for the immigration topic what "Traffic" did for drugs and "Crash" for racism. Ford plays an enforcement agent who stages raids designed to corral illegals.
2. Leonardo DiCaprio is poised to star in Ridley Scott’s next directorial effort, Body of Lies. The Oscar-nominated star is reportedly in "early talks" to topline the Warners pic, which is based on David Ignatius’ novel. DiCaprio will play an ex-journalist-turned CIA agent who’s sent to Amman to work with Jordan’s intelligence chief to track an Al Qaeda leader rumored to be planning attacks against America.
3. Amy Adams will pal around with Frances McDormand in Focus Features’ upcoming period tale Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. In the romantic tale, set in 1939, Adams will portray an American songbird who befriends a dowdy governess sent to her home by mistake.
4. Dancer-singer Willa Ford has signed to star as Anna Nicole Smith in an indie biopic that will begin shooting next week. The previously announced film, Anna Nicole, is produced by Jack Nasser and Joseph Nasser with Elie Samaha executive producing. Keoni Waxman is directing. The movie will cover Smith’s life from age 17 until her death in February at 39, including her success as a Playboy centerfold, Guess model and actress, her marriage to billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, the death of her son and her own death five months after giving birth to a baby girl, Dannielynn.
5. Writer-director Karey Kirkpatrick has signed a two-year, first-look production deal with Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films under his newly formed Blue Shirt Productions. Kirkpatrick, whose helming credits include DreamWorks Animation’s Over the Hedge and Paramount Pictures’ upcoming The Spiderwick Chronicles, will focus on providing live-action family fare for Paramount Pictures labels Nickelodeon and MTV. The pact does not cover animation as Kirkpatrick remains exclusive to DWA in that genre. First up for the Blue Shirt/Nickelodeon partnership is Captain Abdul’s Pirate School, based on a book by Colin McNaughton. The family action-comedy is being penned by Kirkpatrick along with writing partners Chris Poche and Clare Sera, with Kirkpatrick attached to direct.
6. Alex Pettyfer, the young star of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, may be up for a leading role in The Mummy 3.
7. Brendan Fraser has scored a lucrative deal to return for a third The Mummy film, but Rachel Weisz is not coming back. Scribes Miles Millar and Alfred Gough are readying a new draft that will incorporate Weisz’s absence, once approved the Rob Cohen directed project will be greenlit.
8. The Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks are in final talks to return for the prequel Angels & Demons. Akiva Goldsman is adapting Dan Brown’s novel, in which Harvard professor Robert Langdon tries to solve a murder and unravel a plot by an ancient group, the Illuminati, to blow up the Vatican during a papal conclave.
9. producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis have completed a rights deal that will allow them to reinvent Barbarella, and the producers have set Casino Royale screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to pen the script.
10. Forest Whitaker will star alongside Denzel Washington in The Great Debaters, a fact-based drama that Washington will direct next month in Louisiana for The Weinstein Company. Oprah Winfrey and Kate Forte are producing through Harpo Films, along with Todd Black and Joe Roth. Robert Eisele penned the script, inspired by a true story.
11. Lakeshore Entertainment has added Peter Sarsgaard, Dennis Hopper and Deborah Harry to the cast of its untitled feature adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella Dying Animal, which starts filming next month in Vancouver. the trio joins the previously announced Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson.
12. Giovanni Ribisi revealed that he has been cast as a young Albert Einstein in an upcoming biopic to be helmed by Italian director Liliana Cavani.
13. Christina has been set to star opposite Emile Hirsch in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ new action adventure Speed Racer. Ricci will play Trixie, Speed’s loyal and courageous girlfriend, who also proves to be a formidable ally both on and off the racetrack.
14. Anna Kendrick has signed on to star opposite Ben Stiller and Jason Schwartzman in The Marc Pease Experience for Paramount Vantage and Groundswell Productions.
15. Richard Dreyfuss and actor Henry Simmons will star in Sunset Pictures basketball drama Sweetwater. The story follows Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, the first African-American basketball player to play for an NBA team.
16. Rob Marshall will direct a feature film version of the 1982 Broadway musical Nine for the Weinstein Company. The film and play are adapted from Federico Fellini’s 1963 classic autobiographical feature 8 1/2, focusing on a film director stuck in neutral as he tries to make a movie while haunted by the demands of all the women in his life, including a wife, mistress and even his deceased mother.
17. David Mamet will direct his original screenplay Redbelt, set in the Jiu-Jitsu fight world of West Los Angeles, for Sony Pictures Classics. Set to start production in May in L.A., Redbelt is an American samurai film set in an underworld inhabited by bouncers, cage-fighters, cops and special forces operatives.
Trailers:
Good Luck Chuck .Bug .Stardust .Halloween .28 Weeks Later .
In Theaters:
Disturbia- A young man under house arrest becomes a voyeur from his window and suspects that one of his neighbors is a serial killer.
Pathfinger- A young Norse warrior raised by Native Americans wages a personal war to stop the invading Vikings’ trail of destruction.
Perfect Stranger- Halle Berry goes undercover to investigate a powerful man (Bruce Willis) who might be responsible for a friend’s mysterious murder.
Redline- A group of drivers find themselves caught up competing for a large cash prize in an illegal drag race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Slow Burn- Ray Liotta is a district attorney untangling the truth between a beautiful assistant D.A., a gang lord, and a mysterious stranger.
In Selected Theaters:
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters- Meatwad, Frylock and Master Shake invade the big screen.
Everythings Gone Green- A twentysomething slacker gets rich with a money-laundering scheme that puts him at odds with the girl he’s trying to impress.
Lonely Hearts- Two detectives are on the hunt for the "Lonely Hearts Killers," who entrap their victims by answering personal ads in the newspaper.
Year Of The Dog- ]Molly Shannon stars as a happy-go-lucky secretary who must embark on a journey of personal transformation when her dog dies.
Dvds Out This Week:
New Releases:
Freedom Writers
TV Box Sets:
George Lopez: Seasons One & Two
Special Editions/Other Releases:
Adam Bede
Coming Soon:
To DVD:
10 Items or Less-04/24
To Theaters:
Fracture-04/20
Dvd Picks Of The Week
Credit: Darkhorizons.com Superherohype.com Apple.com/trailers Movies.Yahoo.com Comingsoon.net filmforce.ign.com
