what's tasty and new in show business. [beta]
The Tourist is once again shuffling its dance card. Originally set with Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day’s Bharat Nalluri to direct and Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron to star, the film then changed to a Sam Worthington and Angelina Jolie vehicle directed by The Lives of Other’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Now, it looks like both the director and Worthington have dropped out due to the ol’ “creative differences” play. Who could possibly fill those not inconsiderable shoes? Well, according to Variety’s BFDealMemo, Johnny Depp is in talks to step in for the departed Avatar star and among the directorS (emphasis on S) that are circling the project is none other than Alfonso Cuaron. As passively interested as I had become about this remake to the 2005 French thriller Anthony Zimmer, I’m suddenly extremely intrigued by a possible Cuaron project with Depp and Jolie playing the leads. I mean, c’mon! Who doesn’t want to see two stars of that caliber collide in an action thriller from the guy who gave us Children of fucking Men?
More after the jump. Read»
The first teaser for Salt is up now at Yahoo, which casts Angelina Jolie in the title role of Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who is accused of being a Russian double agent and goes off the reservation to clear her name.
The teaser sells the movie as your standard spy-intrigue thriller, with plenty of butt-kicking thrown in courtesy of Angelina. She took on the role that was originally supposed to be played by Tom Cruise; when he dropped out, they just swapped genders and continued forward. I’m curious to see then how it’ll play out – if it’ll be more like Ripley in Alien (who was originally written as male) or if the filmmakers will just take advantage of Jolie’s physical assets to sell some sex appeal. It’d be refreshing to see the former, as we all know how Ellen Ripley went down in strong-female-characters lore.
In any case, I’m not completely hyped about the film yet, but director Phillip Noyce has done some good work in the past and Jolie ain’t no slouch either. Check out the teaser after the jump and decide for yourself. Read»
It’s been some time since we last heard about the Gucci movie, which was set to be directed by Ridley Scott and focus on the story of Maurizio Gucci, grandson to Guccio Gucci, founder of the fashion company empire. After much internal strife within the family, Maurizio emerged as the head of the company in the early 1990s. In 1995, on the eve of his boldest move yet as company head — the debut of a new line designed by then-newcomer Tom Ford — he was gunned down by a hired hitman in front of his Milan apartment. His wife, Patrizia, was later convicted for plotting his murder and sentenced to 29 years behind bars.
After much silence, it looks like the project is once again making moves, and big moves at that. Variety reports that Scott is in talks with Angelina Jolie to portray Patrizia Gucci. A new writer is also being hired to work on Charles Randolph (The Interpreter, Love and Other Drugs)’s original draft of the screenplay, which, in addition to exploring Maurizio’s tale, captures the glamor and intrigue of the company’s glory days in the 70s and 80s when it moved $500 million in product annually.
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