MUMBAI: Doug Liman is in talks with Fox and producers Ridley Scott and Simon Kinberg to direct Narco Sub, the script by David Guggenheim. The plot: After a captain’s son is kidnapped by a drug cartel, he is blackmailed into piloting a broken down rebuilt sub from South America to the US, carrying 20 tons of cocaine.
It sounds a bit like Captain Phillips. Scott and Michael Schaeffer will produce with Kinberg. Resolution is working on Liman’s deal.
MUMBAI: Mexican bombshell Salma Hayek has joined in the lead trio of the movie How to make love like an Englishman along with Pierce Brosnan and Jessica Alba. Tom Vaughn will direct the sexually charged romantic comedy.
Scripted by Matthew Newman, the movie has Brosnan playing a university professor who finds his ideal match in Hayek. So he decides to give up the pleasures that he is indulging in. However he meets Hayek after he has impregnated Alba who is Hayek’s stepsister and a student.
Produced by Richard Lewis, Beau St Clair and Kevin Frakes, the movie is a co-production between Palmstar Media Capital, Southpaw Entertainment, Irish Dreamtime and Envision.
Brosnan is exec producer along with Raj Brinder Singh, Lisa Wilson, Myles Nestel and Remington Chase. The film is funded by Merced Media Partners and Palmstar.
Pierce Brosnan has got another film lined up for him- I T.
MUMBAI: China’s Huading awards are set to see some high profile Hollywood actors such as Quentin Tarantino, Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage. The award night is to be held at Macau on 7 October.
The award show is based on voting for top athletics and entertainment talent and is a type of Chinese Oscars. Sam Worthington from Avatar, Jeremy Irons and Matthew Perry from F.R.I.E.N.D.S are the other stars that are to be seen at the event.
Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai and Jackie Chan will be the representatives of China.
The awards event was set up in 2007 by Media Company Global Talents Media group in Beijing and is held many times a year to honour talents in various fields.
MUMBAI: Blue Jasmine was to release last weekend in India but the hope was denied as director Woody Allen refused to comply with anti-tobacco norms in the country. According to the Indian government rule, anti-tobacco ads are displayed before movies are screened and a text message is inserted while a smoking scene is taking place on screen, for all Indian as well as foreign movies.
The movie was to be released by PVR cinemas. According to a statement made by PVR Pictures COO Deepak Sharma, Allen is said to have told that when the message is shown, the audience’s attention is diverted to it rather than to the scene.
Blue Jasmine is a critically acclaimed movie that stars Cate Blanchett as a wealthy socialite who is struggling to fit into reality once her husband is caught for financial fraud.
Previously, another movie faced release issues – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – due to censor board wanting to delete a few scenes from the movie.
MUMBAI: Paramount’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, in which Johnny Knoxville punks strangers while in character as senior citizen Irving Zisman.
The previous three Jackass films grossed $79mn, $84mn, and $170mn worldwide for Paramount – but they also kept to the show’s signature disconnected shocks and pranks vs. a Borat-esque hidden camera narrative.
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MUMBAI: Universal Pictures will release the follow-up to Seth MacFarlane‘s highest-grossing original R-rated comedy of all time on 26 June 2015.
MacFarlane returns as writer, director and co-star of Ted 2 along with star Mark Wahlberg from Universal and Media Rights Capital. Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild return as scribes.
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MacFarlane produces alongside Bluegrass Films’ Scott Stuber, as well as John Jacobs and Jason Clark. The first film made about $550 million worldwide after its June 2012 release.
MUMBAI: A part of the Viacom conglomerate, Paramount Pictures has decided to trim down its staff by 110 people. Just a memo was issued to people who have been sent back home.
The reductions will be in the Finace, HR, IT, International home media distribution, legal and marketing departments. In a letter to its sacked employees the company CEO Frederick Huntsberry said that the layoffs were needed to manage business ‘with greater speed and flexibility as well as capitalise on opportunities in the global entertainment market’.
The company has plans to re-enter into TV. Their performances on the big screen have just been average.
Positions have been shed in their head office in LA as well as many international offices. Previously in 2011, the company laid off 120 people.
MUMBAI: In an announcement, the C S Lewis Company said that it will be joining hands with the Mark Gordon Company to produce the fourth installment in the Chronicles of Narnia series. The Silver Chair will be a film version of the fourth book from the adaptation of the fantasy series.
Mark Gordon and Douglas Gresham (stepson of C S Lewis) will be producing along with Vincent Sieber. The three will work on the script together.
The first three series have been a worldwide success grossing over $1.6 billion worldwide. The first movie got the best with $745 million. It was produced by Disney. The next two were distributed by Fox.
An entirely new cast is set to appear in the movie set 50 years after the last one – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
MUMBAI: James Franco directs the pic about 1950s teen idol and Oscar-nominated actor Sal Mineo, who rocketed to fame with his turns in Rebel Without A Cause and Otto Preminger’s Exodus before he was stabbed to death at age 37.
Sal, scripted by Stacey Miller with a story by Miller, Franco, Vince Jolivette, and Val Lauren from Michael Gregg Michaud’s book on the actor, follows Mineo in his final hours as he struggles to regain career momentum. Lauren stars as Mineo alongside Franco, Jolivette, Miller, Jim Parrack, Trevor Neuhoff, and Raymond T. Williams.
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Tribeca Films will release the pic on VOD and iTunes on 22 October followed by a limited theatrical run 1 November.
MUMBAI: Academy Award-winning producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Milk, Silver Linings Playbook) is set to produce The Fifth Beatle, about the life of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
The English entrepreneur Paul McCartney dubbed “the fifth Beatle” helped launch the career of the Fab Five and managed them until his death by accidental overdose in 1967. He was also a closeted gay man whose close relationship with John Lennon was the subject of the 1991 Sundance entry The Hours and Times.
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The Fifth Beatle will be the first feature film about the Beatles to obtain the rights to use their original songs. Pic is scripted by Tony-winning producer Vivek J. Tiwary (Green Day’s American Idiot, Mel Brooks’ The Producers) from his own forthcoming graphic novel with art by Andrew C.
Robinson and cartoonist Kyle Baker, which Dark Horse releases 19 November. Tiwary will produce alongside Cohen, who won the Oscar in 2000 for American Beauty. Production is set to begin in 2014.