Category: Movies

The project centers on a woman (Witherspoon) who gets a job at a pharma powerhouse but begins to see the underbelly of the industry as she rises through the company‘s ranks. Tracy Falco and Maradith Frenkel are overseeing for the studio.”

The pharmaceutical industry is no stranger to being portrayed in past Hollywood motion pictures as an underhanded and felonious business. Some examples include the 1993 Harrison Ford drama, The Fugitive and the industry‘s villainous ways were also the focal point of the 2005 Ralph Fiennes/Rachel Weisz thriller, The Constant Gardner.

Meanwhile, Witherspoon‘s star has continued to rise in Hollywood as she has starred in hit comedies like 1999‘s Election as well as 2001‘s Legally Blonde and its 2003 sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Yet, she has also shown audiences her keen ability to handle more dramatic roles. This was proven when in 2005 she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of June Carter in the biopic of singer Johnny Cash‘s life, entitled Walk the Line.

Relatively speaking, M:i:3 was a box-office disappointment, compared with the second film‘s worldwide gross of $545 million and the original film‘s take of $452 million.

Abrams recently rebooted a moribund franchise by taking it back to its beginnings with a bunch of young, relatively unknown actors. His Star Trek,released six weeks ago, has grossed $335 million worldwide so far.

Abrams is not on board to direct the new Impossible,and no writers have been hired to work on the fourth iteration of the franchise.

“Economic conditions are playing out favorably for us,” said S. Nagarajan, the chief operating officer of Visual Computing Labs, based in Mumbai, the visual effects and animation unit of Tata Elxsi, one of India‘s most prominent studios. “People are more willing to experiment.”

His company, one of 18 special effects studios that worked on “Spider-Man 3,” has billed as much in the first three months of this year as it did in nine months last year, he said.

For Spiderman 3, Tata Elxsi VCL cut out studio stunt shots of Spiderman and sent them back to California, where they were fit into urban landscapes so the hero appeared to be swooping in death-defying arcs from one tall building to another.

Khandpur said smaller production companies have been more willing to send over complex shots. For One Night with the King, a 2006 movie about the biblical figure of Esther, the young Jewish woman who became the queen of Persia, VCL used computer software to create and people entire landscapes, filling the land with castles, waterfalls, and hundreds of horsemen, elephants and villagers.

In the last few years a string of acquisitions and new ventures have started to build the relationships and expertise India needs to become a more of a destination for such higher-end work.

Two old Hollywood hands recently opened visual effects companies in Mumbai: Geon, founded by The Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne, and EyeQube Studios, headed by Charles Darby whose credits include Titanic and the HBO series Rome.

Darby set up EyeQube with backing from the U.K.‘s Eros International and plans to release his first film Aladin – an effects-driven live action film featuring top Bollywood talent – in July.

Another ghost-centric film, referred to as Freakers was being written by Joe Syracuse & Lisa Addario (Surf‘s Up) and centers on a ghost story told from the ghosts‘ point of view, in their world. That project is no longer active.

A third ghost-related story idea is in the pitch stage.

In late May, DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose contract recently was extended to 2013, said a “supersecret ghost project” was on the books for a potential late-2012 slot. Boo U is that project.

Puss in Boots (March 30) and a third Madagascar movie (May) are also slated for release in 2012. The ghost picture would hit theaters Nov. 12, unless the caveman comedy The Croods or the Terry Pratchett adaptation Truckers makes the cut instead.

So far, he has also managed to kept quiet about his next project which will come under a recent three-picture deal with Fox Searchlight and Pathe. While they have optioned rights to Suketu Mehta‘s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,” a book that also served as a reference while shooting Slumdog, Boyle said that will not be first up.

“I‘m looking forward to going back to Bombay, what a great place for a thriller, it has so many elements,” he said.

Nor is Boyle put off by the tumultuous reactions within India to his picture or the media circus that has surrounded the film‘s treatment of the child actors. “We‘ll use some of it in the next pictures,” he said. We‘ve made a lot of decisions (about trusts and 10-year education plans for the kids) which we‘ll stick to.”

En route to China‘s business capital Boyle stopped off in Beijing and Hong Kong, where he met up with an old pal from school. “I‘ve just seen three amazing Asian cities,” he said. “There‘s an appetite for cinema in Asia that Hollywood doesn‘t recognize yet,” he said while discussing the region‘s onscreen talent.

On Tuesday, Boyle and fellow jurors took time out from the screening rooms to visit the filming of period actioner “Bodyguards and Assassins,” shooting an hour outside the city on a backlot where Hong Kong‘s Central district, circa 1905, has been rebuilt on a full scale. “The scale and ambition on display were amazing. This (set) could be the difference between getting a film made or not,” he said.

Boyle said he has been little changed by “Slumdog” bandwagon. “It seems to have changed everyone else, I continue in the same vein,” he said. “I was lucky to have a success. And I continue to aim to be ambitious, to promise myself ‘don‘t be careful,‘ and to enjoy a spirit of recklessness.”

As to the films seen he and the jury have seen at the halfway mark: “Quality simply surges out.”