Naomi Watts’ Princess Diana Movie + Jesus vs. Sylvester Stallone

“Jesus Christ Himself Will Face Off Against Rambo And The Terminator In The Tomb,” blasts a Cinema Blend headline about the upcoming pairing of 1980s all-brawn, no-brain movie heroes Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If only. Imagine Jesus battling an aged Rambo/Rocky and the former governor of California. What kinds of weapons would be used? Love and compassion? A-bombs and hand grenades? And who would come out on top? Think of the ideological possibilities.

Well, unfortunately, it turns out that Mikael Håfström’s The Tomb in all likelihood won’t be any more intellectually challenging or stimulating than, say, Cobra or Conan the Destroyer. In the actioner (info via JoBlo.com), Stallone and Schwarzenegger will play two inmates bent on escaping from a high-security prison (built by the wrongfully imprisoned Stallone himself) overseen by none other than The Passion of the Christ‘s Jim Caviezel (photo), whose movie career has stalled despite Terrence Malick’s Best Picture Oscar nominee The Thin Red Line and Mel Gibson’s aforementioned religious blockbuster. (Caviezel has blamed his career woes on an anti-Passion backlash.)

Prior to The Tomb, fans of hot movie action and big-gun-toting older men will surely squeal with delight watching Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, and Chuck Norris – in addition to The Last Song/The Hunger Games/AWOL‘s Liam Hemsworth lest things get a little too senior – doing their thing in Simon West’s The Expendables 2. (Note: The article initially had Thor and Snow White and the Huntsman as two Liam Hemsworth movies, when those are actually vehicles for his brother, Chris Hemsworth.)

Jim Caviezel photo via WENN.

Naomi Watts as Marilyn Monroe, Blonde

Naomi Watts: Princess Diana Movie

Naomi Watts — instead of the previously rumored Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, Best Supporting Actress nominee for The Help) – will play Princess Diana in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Caught in Flight, whose distribution rights are being offered to highest bidder by producing company Ecosse Films at the just-opened Berlin Film Festival, says The Hollywood Reporter. As per the Reporter, production is slated to begin in the U.K. later this year.

Stephen Jeffreys’ Caught in Flight screenplay follows Diana during the last two years of her life, when she became known less for her troubled marriage to Prince Charles than for her humanitarian causes, such as visiting AIDS patients and calling for an end to the use of land mines. (Since 1997, the year Diana died in a Paris car crash, more than one hundred and fifty countries have signed a treaty banning the use of land mines. China, Iran, Israel, the United States, and Russia are among the three dozen that have refused to do so.)

At the movies, the death of Princess Diana provided the background for Stephen Frears’ Oscar-nominated The Queen (2006), which starred eventual Best Actress winner Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. Last year, Keith Allen’s controversial documentary about the British royal family, Unlawful Killing, asserted that Diana and her then boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, were killed by the British Secret Service.

Not that long ago, Naomi Watts was also announced as a prospective Marilyn Monroe in the movie Blonde. In recent months, little has been heard about this film project. (As Monroe, Michelle Williams is a Best Actress Oscar nominee for Simon Curtis’ My Week with Marilyn.)

Watts, who received a Best Actress Oscar nod for 21 Grams (2003), will next be seen in Laurie Collyer’s Sunlight Jr., opposite Norman Reedus and Matt Dillon; Juan Antonio Bayona’s disaster drama The Impossible, with Ewan McGregor and veteran Geraldine Chaplin; and the all-star omnibus comedy Movie 43, with Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Kristen Bell, Uma Thurman, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Josh Duhamel, Chloë Grace Moretz, Gerard Butler, Anna Faris, Justin Long, and Elizabeth Banks. Watts’ previous efforts include David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007).

In the last few years, British political figures that have received Academy Award recognition include The Queen‘s Helen Mirren; The King’s Speech‘s Colin Firth; and this year’s Meryl Streep, a Best Actress nominee for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

American political figures have been less lucky. Recently, the English-born Watts impersonated two real-life such characters: spy Valerie Plame in Fair Game, opposite Sean Penn as her husband, and J. Edgar Hoover’s secretary Helen Gandy in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI honcho. None of the actors in either movie was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

Titanic 3D poster: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, sinking ship

‘Titanic 3D’ Poster: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Sinking Ship

Titanic 3D opens April 6, 2012. But the romantic/disaster movie’s poster (via moviefone.com) is already here, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Directed by James Cameron, and starring youthful couple Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, following its late 1997 release Titanic went on to become the biggest box office hit the universe had ever known – if you choose to ignore inflation, of course.

Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment have reportedly spent 60 weeks and $18 million on the Titanic‘s full restoration and 2D-to-3D conversion, which is more than double what the actual ship cost back in 1912. (Well, okay – if, once again, you choose to ignore that pesky thing called inflation.) Despite all that dough, the director-producer says the new Titanic is in “2.99D”; in other words, superior to the “2.4D” of most conversions though not exactly the 3D of, say, Avatar.

In early 1998, Titanic was nominated for a record-tying 14 Academy Awards. (Though seriously handicapped by a lack of special effects and killer icebergs, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve somehow managed the same number of nominations back in 1950.) Eventually, Cameron’s film won a total of 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, another record-tying feat – this time with William Wyler’s equally mammoth 1959 Ben-Hur. (In early 2004, another superproduction, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, would tie with Titanic and Ben-Hur.)

Kate Winslet, veteran Gloria Stuart (The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House), and the make-up crew were the only Titanic nominees that failed to take home an Oscar statuette: Winslet lost to Helen Hunt in James L. Brooks’ As Good as It Gets; Stuart lost to Kim Basinger in Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential; the Tommy Lee Jones-Will Smith movie Men in Black won for Best Make-Up. Leonardo DiCaprio and James Cameron’s screenplay, for their part, were not even nominated. Else, Titanic would have boasted a record-shattering 16 Oscar nods.

In addition to DiCaprio, Winslet, and Stuart, Titanic features Billy Zane, Kathy Bates (as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”), Bill Paxton, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, David Warner, Victor Garber, Suzy Amis, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, and Ioan Gruffudd.

Gael García Bernal: Zorro Reboot

Gael García Bernal is keeping himself busy. According to Variety, García Bernal is attached to star in the futuristic Zorro reboot Zorro Reborn for 20th Century Fox. He’s also to be featured opposite Will Ferrell and Diego Luna in Matt Piedmont’s comedy Casa de mi Padre, and in Nicole Kassell’s A Little Bit of Heaven, with Kate Hudson and Peter Dinklage.

And that’s not all: García Bernal is reportedly planning on making a documentary about immigration, and is attached to star as Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran in Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone, opposite Al Pacino and Ryan Kwanten.

Now, Variety explains that Zorro Reborn will be quite different from the Zorro of Tyrone Power, Frank Langella, Antonio Banderas, or Guy Williams. (Or George Hamilton, for that matter.) For starters, Zorro Reborn will not be set in Old California, then a part of Mexico. Nor will Zorro be a light-hearted sword fighter. This masked avenger will be just that: “a masked vigilante bent on revenge.”

The Zorro Reborn screenplay is by Glenn Gers, Lee Shipman, and Brian McGreevy. No director has been named as yet.

Variety adds that García Bernal’s Zorro won’t be the only masked swordsman around. Sony Pictures, which distributed the two relatively recent Zorro films starring Antonio Banderas, The Mask of Zorro (1998) and The Legend of Zorro (2005), is developing its own Zorro tale based on Isabel Allende’s novel Zorro. Allende’s book is a prequel to the pop-culture Zorro stories first featured in Johnston McCulley’s 1919 novella The Curse of Capistrano.

Among Gael García Bernal’s movie credits are Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries; Icíar Bollaín’s Even the Rain; Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, with Diego Luna; Carlos Carrera’s Oscar-nominated The Crime of Padre Amaro; and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Oscar-nominated Amores Perros and Babel, the latter with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

Also, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, with Charlotte Gainsbourg; Gary Winick’s Letters to Juliet, with Amanda Seyfried; Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness, with Julianne Moore; and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education.

Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Anna Hutchison, The Cabin in the Woods

Chris Hemsworth ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ Picture

Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth, along with the equally curious (and probably doomed) Fran Kranz (Much Ado About Nothing, Lust for Love) and Anna Hutchison (Blinder, Notting Hill) look for Something inside the basement of a cabin in – one assumes – the woods. It remains to be seen whether they’ll find that Something or that Something will find them.

I’m hoping for the latter, so Hemsworth will have that college/high-school-dude jacket torn from him. It’ll then be revealed he’s a man in his late 20s trying to pass for a teen or facsimile. In fact, The Cabin in the Woods is reportedly filled with unexpected twists and turns. Perhaps that’ll be one them.

The Cabin in the Woods was written by Drew Goddard, who also directs, and Joss Whedon, who directed Hemsworth (and Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Hiddleston, etc.) in the upcoming The Avengers. The Cabin in the Woods hits theaters on April 13, though its premiere will take place at Austin’s SXSW in March.

In addition to The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers, Hemsworth should be seen this year in Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman, opposite Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, and Dan Bradley’s Red Dawn, with Josh Hutcherson and Isabel Lucas.

Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Anna Hutchison, The Cabin in the Woods photo via the Cabin in the Woods Facebook page.