Mel Gibson + Oksana Grigorieva Controversy Eclipses The Beaver

Mel Gibson in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver.

Mel Gibson’s rant, in which he yells over the phone at girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, has been made available at the online tabloid radaronline.com.

The rant revolves around Grigorieva’s supposedly “fake” breasts and the way she dresses. It has become infamous worldwide because it contains sexually abusive insults, one of which features an allusion to her looking like “a fucking bitch in heat” that could end up getting gang raped “by a pack of niggers.”

(Not that millions and millions of people the world over, famous or otherwise, don’t use ethnic and sexual slurs while having private arguments – or when anonymously leaving comments online. Gibson’s problem is that his ugly side became public.)

Earlier this afternoon it was announced that Gibson had been dropped by William Morris Endeavor. He’d been a client of William Morris’ Ed Limato, who died on July 3, for more than three decades.

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster, and co-starring Foster and Gibson, is slated to come out in the fall, according to unconfirmed reports. (Update: The Beaver was finally released in early May 2011.)

Summit Entertainment, which this year alone has successfully released audience friendly fare such as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and, with modest success, the trickier Roman Polanski thriller The Ghost Writer, owns the distribution rights to the comedy-drama (written by Kyle Killen) about an executive who parades around with his buddy – a hand puppet beaver. (Shades of Harvey? In that 1950 movie based on Mary Chase’s play, James Stewart plays a man whose best bud is an invisible, giant rabbit.)

Mel Gibson won an Academy Award for Best Director for the 1995 epic Braveheart, about Scotland’s fight for independence from England, which also took home the Best Picture Oscar.

Prior to his winning the Oscar, Gibson had faced accusations of anti-gay bigotry, but those obviously didn’t affect his career.

Accusations of anti-Semitism following both the highly successful The Passion of the Christ and a 2006 DUI arrest in Malibu, however, did affect his popularity.

His latest effort, The Edge of Darkness was a costly box office dud for Warner Bros. When the movie came out, Gibson took a combative stance against those who mentioned the 2006 incident.

As a result of Gibson’s shaky box office clout, his most recent outburst and the ongoing investigation on domestic-abuse charges, The Beaver will likely face an uphill battle finding an audience – or even a release date in the near future.

Gibson is currently working on the ironically titled prison drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation, directed by Adrian Grunberg for Gibson’s own Icon Productions.

Photo: Summit Entertainment

Previous post

Mel Gibson, currently embroiled in a nasty child custody battle, has been dropped by William Morris Endeavor.

According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Kim Masters, earlier this week WME’s Patrick Whitesell told Gibson’s representatives “that he would no longer be represented by the agency.”

Gibson’s longtime (32 years) agent at William Morris, Ed Limato, died July 3. Without Limato, Gibson – an Oscar winner for the 1995 epic Braveheart – became persona non grata at the agency.

As quoted by Jeff Sneider in TheWrap, WME partner Ari Emanuel wrote the following at the time of Gibson’s 2006 DUI arrest, during which the actor made anti-Semitic remarks:

“I wish Mel Gibson well in dealing with his alcoholism, but alcoholism does not excuse racism and anti-Semitism. Now we know the truth. And no amount of publicist-approved contrition can paper it over. People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line. There are times in history when standing up against bigotry and racism is more important than money.”

More recently, Gibson’s child custody battle with former companion Oksana Grigorieva has further tarnished the actor’s image.

Gibson is currently being investigated for assaulting Grigorieva, and was allegedly recorded screaming at her sexually abusive insults – one of which included an anti-black slur. (A segment of a reportedly thirty-minute recording has just been released at radar.com.)

Gibson’s latest effort, Warner Bros.’ $80 million revenge thriller Edge of Darkness, grossed only $43 million domestically and $37 million overseas earlier this year.

His next release is the comedy-drama The Beaver, directed by and co-starring Jodie Foster.

The actor is currently working on the prison drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation, made under the aegis of his own Icon Productions. Adrian Grunberg is the film’s director.

Summit Entertainment owns the distribution rights to the character comedy-drama The Beaver, in which Gibson plays a man who talks to a hand puppet beaver. Jodie Foster directed and co-stars.

At this stage, it’s unclear when The Beaver will be released domestically, though earlier reports had it opening in the fall.

In 2008, Kyle Killen’s screenplay for The Beaver had topped the list of best-liked unproduced scripts of the year. According to Variety, The Beaver was expected to cost $18m-$19 million.

Photo: Edge of Darkness (Warner Bros.)

July 12 update

Another freakish Mel Gibson rant has been released on tape at radaronline.com.

In this expletive-filled diatribe, Gibson tells girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva that she deserved to be hit (even while holding her baby daughter) and metaphorically threatens to kill her – “I’ll put you in a fucking rose garden … You understand that?”

The fate of Jodie Foster’s The Beaver remains uncertain. No release date has been set by Summit Entertainment, which owns the domestic distribution rights to the comedy-drama about a man (Gibson) whose only friend is his hand puppet beaver.

According to a Reuters report, Summit says “they are happy” with The Beaver, which cost a reported $20 million. Summit split production costs with other investors and has reportedly presold distribution rights in a number of international markets.

Gibson’s latest release, the $80 million revenge thriller Edge of Darkness, was a box office disappointment earlier this year, with worldwide grosses only slightly above its production cost. (Studios get about half that amount; and then there are distribution and marketing costs that need to be covered. In other words, Edge of Darkness ended up deep in the red.)

Gibson is currently starring in the prison drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation, which is being produced by his own company, Icon Productions.

Photo: Warner Bros.

The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 teaser poster has been released. As can be seen, it shows a castle engulfed in flames. The caption ominously reads: IT ALL ENDS HERE.

As attested by the preview and this teaser poster, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 will be a much darker Harry Potter.

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 comes out on Nov. 19. Part II will follow on July 15.

Directed by David Yates and adapted by Steve Kloves from J.K. Rowlings‘ novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows features Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Miranda Richardson, Maggie Smith, John Hurt, Ciaran Hinds, David Thewlis, Brenda Gleeson, Julie Walters, Imelda Staunton and Robbie Coltrane.

Image: Warner Bros.

Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man

Andrew Garfield (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Lions for Lambs, Boy A) will be the new Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Sony/Columbia has announced. Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer will direct the Spider-Man reboot, from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, The Losers).

Tobey Maguire played Parker and his alter ego in three highly successful movies ($2.5 billion worldwide), all directed by Sam Raimi. Kirsten Dunst played the love interest.

Both Maguire, 35, and Raimi, 50, left the franchise earlier this year. Sony then announced that the next Spider-Man movie would start from scratch, taking Parker back to his high-school days.

Among the other rumored possibilities to play Peter Parker at one time or another were Chace Crawford, Logan Lerman, and even Robert Pattinson.

Andrew Garfield, who turns 27 in August, will next be seen in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, co-starring with Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Charlotte Rampling, and in David Fincher’s The Social Network, with Jesse Eisenberg, Rashida Jones, and Justin Timberlake.

Garfield won a BAFTA TV Award for his performance in John Crowley’s psychological drama Boy A, which was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

The Los Angeles-born, British-raised Garfield, long before Spider-Man was even a distant possibility, was present to field questions from the audience.

Spider-Man will begin filming – in 3D – in December. It’s scheduled to open in July 2012.

Photo: Lions for Lambs (20th Century Fox)

Meryl Streep (not Emma Thompson, sigh) “is in talks” to play Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd’s Thatcher, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Lloyd has previously worked with Streep in the blockbuster musical Mamma Mia!.

As per the Reporter, Jim Broadbent is also in talks to play Thatcher’s husband, Denis. Brian Fillis is penning the screenplay, based on a story by Fillis and producer Damien Jones.

Among Streep’s previous impersonations of real-life characters are her Karen Silkwood (Mike Nichols’ Silkwood, 1983), Karen Blixen (Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa, 1985), Lindy Chamberlain (Fred Schepisi’s A Cry in the Dark, 1988), Roberta Guaspari (Wes Craven’s Music of the Heart, 1999), and, most recently, Julia Child (Norah Ephron’s Julie & Julia, 2009).

Streep received Best Actress Academy Award nominations for all of the above. Helen Mirren won a Best Actress Oscar three and a half years ago for playing a movie-movie version of Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears’ fluffy The Queen. If you add 1 + 1, what do you get? At least 17 – as in the number of Oscar nods for Meryl Streep in case she does get to play Thatcher.

Thatcher, I might add, is not a musical. Despite its Falklands War period setting, Streep, who always wanted to play Evita Peron, won’t get to sing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

After all, the Falklands War was a gift to the then embattled right-wing British prime minister, whose “free market” policies were hardly what one would call popular.

A bloody (and ultimately failed) bid by Argentina’s far-right military to take control of the Falklands islands – which Argentinean nationalists claim is rightfully part of their country’s territory – sent Thatcher’s approval ratings soaring in mid-1982. She was reelected the following year.

The 74-day war resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 Argentinean and British servicemen, in addition to three local civilians.

Photo: 20th Century Fox

Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab Lands, a PBS documentary based on Robert Satloff’s book, is now available on DVD. According to its press release, Among the Righteous “investigates forgotten links between Arabs and Jews during the Holocaust to reveal the great heroism that took place during this tumultuous period in history.”

In the ForaTV clip above, Satloff discusses “several stories of assistance North African Arabs offered to Jews during the Holocaust.”

The information below is from the PBS website:

“Did any Arabs save Jews during the Holocaust? That’s the question author Robert Satloff had in mind when he set out to discover the lost, true stories of survival, courage and betrayal in Arab lands during World War II. The history of the Holocaust in Europe is well-documented, but the history of what happened to the Jewish people of North Africa has been mostly forgotten, even in the very towns and cities where it occurred. The truth is remarkable: not only did Jews in Arab lands suffer many of same elements of persecution as Jews in Europe – arrests, deportations, confiscations and forced labor – but there were also hopeful stories of ‘righteous’ Arabs reaching out to protect them.”

Trigger auction

Attention Roy Rogers fans (with deep pockets).

The remains of Trigger, Rogers’ co-star in My Pal Trigger and other 1940s Republic Westerns, will be auctioned by Christie’s in New York City.

The auction includes not only what’s left of Trigger but also a number of items from the now-defunct Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri, according to an Associated Press report. (Dale Evans was Rogers’ wife and frequent co-star. In later years, Evans could be seen on Christian TV shows.)

Trigger – who, of course, had no say on the matter – was preserved with taxidermy in 1965. The presale estimate for the dead horse ranges from $100,000 to $200,000.

In this rough economy – or in any type of economy – animal-welfare charities would be thrilled to get that sort of money.

Peter Jackson to direct ‘The Hobbit’?

Peter Jackson – or Sir Peter Jackson since late 2009 – may end up directing The Hobbit.

According to Mike Fleming at Deadline.com, “Peter Jackson has decided to direct two installments of The Hobbit, trusted sources are telling me. His deal is being negotiated right now with Warner Bros , New Line, and MGM.”

Following Guillermo del Toro’s departure from the project less than four weeks ago – reportedly because of del Toro’s time constraints and MGM’s shaky finances – all sorts of names have been bandied about as possible replacements for the director of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. Those ranged from Christopher Nolan and Neill Blomkamp to absurdities such as Quentin Tarantino and the ghost of Cecil B. DeMille.

At the time of del Toro’s departure, Jackson’s manager Ken Kamins told EW.com that “as for Peter directing, that’s not something he can consider at this time as he has other commitments to other projects. But make no mistake, Peter and Fran’s commitment to the franchise is total and [they] will do everything necessary to protect the films and the investment made by New Line, [parent company] Warner Bros. and MGM.”

Perhaps Jackson is now doing “everything necessary” to protect The Hobbit, to be released as two films, shot back-to-back. We’ll see.

Photo: The Lovely Bones (Matt Mueller / DreamWorks/Paramount)

Roman Polanski’s political thriller The Ghost Writer will be Summit Entertainment’s first single-disc, Blu-ray/DVD Combo release. Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton and Eli Wallach, the critically acclaimed The Ghost Writer, winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, will be available on August 3, 2010. The film will also be available as a standard single-disc DVD.

Written by Polanski and Robert Harris from Harris’ novel The Ghost, The Ghost Writer tells the story of a ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) hired to pen the memoirs of a former Tony Blair-like British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who has numerous deeply hidden, decomposing skeletons in his closet.

THE GHOST WRITER Blu- ray™/DVD Combo Disc & Standard DVD Product Details

Street Date: August 3, 2010

Pre-Order: June 8, 2009

Run time: 128 minutes

Genre: Political Thriller

Bonus Features

Three original featurettes:

“An Interview with Roman Polanski”

“The Cast of The Ghost Writer” a behind-the-scenes visit with the cast

“The Ghost Writer: Fiction or Reality?” an interview with best-selling author Robert Harris

Audio: English 2.0

Blu-ray™/DVD Combo Disc Specifications

Single Disc:

Blu-ray™

Audio: English DTS -HD Master Audio / LAS 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH & LAS Subtitles

Aspect Ratio: 16×9 (2:35) Letterbox

SRP: $40.99

DVD

Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital / LAS 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH & LAS Subtitles

Aspect Ratio: 16×9 (2:35) Letterbox

SRP: $26.99

Standard DVD Specifications

Single Disc:

Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital / LAS 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH & LAS Subtitles

Aspect Ratio: 16×9 (2:35) Letterbox

SRP: $26.99

Photo: Summit Entertainment