The Bourne Legacy Trailer: Jeremy Renner Good Matt Damon Replacement?

The Bourne Legacy trailer with Jeremy Renner.

The Bourne Legacy trailer

The Bourne Legacy trailer offers lots of action, murders, and senseless brutality to entertainment the whole family. However murky its plot may be, expect the Tony Gilroy movie starring The Hurt Locker, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and The Avengers actor Jeremy Renner to be a big hit. Gilroy also co-wrote the screenplay with Dan Gilroy.

The Bourne Legacy also features the following actors in its prestigious cast: Oscar winner Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener), two-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton (American History X, Primal Fear), five-time Oscar nominee Albert Finney (Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express), three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Contender, The Crucible), and Oscar nominee David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck). Plus Scott Glenn, Donna Murphy, Oscar Isaac, Stacy Keach, Michael Chernus, and Corey Stoll. Matt Damon isn’t featured in the film, but his face can be seen on a TV news show when the name Jason Bourne is mentioned.

The Bourne Legacy opens Aug. 3.

Harrison Ford Deckard Returns? + Atlas Shrugged Lawsuit

Harrison Ford to be featured in Ridley Scott’s prequel or sequel of Scott’s own sci-fi classic Alien? Oh, wait. That’s Prometheus, which may or may not be an Alien prequel or sequel. So, scratch that. According to online rumors, Ford would be featured in another prequel or sequel of another Ridley Scott classic sci-fier, Blade Runner.

Earlier this week, someone somewhere claimed that Scott and Ford were in talks to have the Oscar-nominated actor (for Peter Weir’s Witness, 1985) reprise his role as replicant-killing detective Rick Deckard (also a replicant or not?) in Scott’s very much in-the-works Blade Runner prequel or sequel. But when discussing the possibility of Ford’s casting, Scott told EW.com the following” “No. Don’t know yet. Don’t know yet.” And when asked if he would rule out bringing Deckard back for some more blade running, Scott emphatically answered: “Absolutely not. But I’m not sure that that’s going to be a story point, so I don’t know. But if it were, nothing would please me more. Honestly.”

In other words, Deckard/Ford may show up in the new Blade Runner. Or he may not. But in case he does show up – how could the new Blade Runner movie be anything but a sequel? Unless, that is, its storyline will borrow elements from David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which Brad Pitt starts out as an old man who grows younger as time goes by. Harrison Ford, after all, turns 70 next July 13.

And finally, Ridley Scott seems to have enjoyed working on Prometheus so much, he’s already talking about Prometheus 2. Now, will that be a prequel or a sequel to the original Prometheus? And will he bring back Alien‘s (and Aliens‘) Sigourney Weaver for that one?

Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, Prometheus opens June 8, 2012. In the cast: X-Men: First Class/Shame‘s Michael Fassbender, Young Adult/Mirror Mirror‘s Charlize Theron, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ Noomi Rapace, The King’s Speech/Mildred Pierce‘s Guy Pearce, Morning Glory/Insidious’ Patrick Wilson, Thor/Luther‘s Idris Elba, plus Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, and Kate Dickie.

Atlas Shrugged: Taylor Schilling as Dagny TaggartAn Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 lawsuit is in the works. The company behind the box office bomb starring Zac Efron’s The Lucky One’s love interest Taylor Schilling as Ayn Rand’s heroine Dagny Taggart is suing Relativity Media and Netflix for failing to pay a $1.5 million license fee to release Atlas Shrugged on home video.

Why Relativity and Netflix would agree to pay $1.5 million to distribute a critical and box office disaster like Atlas Shrugged is mind-boggling. Made for a reported $20 million, Atlas Shrugged generated a measly $4.62 million in North America. The film’s overseas take is nil, as Ayn Rand and her ideology are intrinsically American phenomena. Additionally, Atlas Shrugged – which has become a succès d’estime chiefly among the American far-right – has a dismal 6 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes‘ top critics, and an average 3.2/10 grade.

June 1 update: The Atlas Shrugged lawsuit has been dropped.

Atlas Shrugged lawsuit source: The Hollywood Reporter

Taylor Schilling / Atlas Shrugged picture: Rocky Mountain Pictures.

Safe Haven Movie: Josh Duhamel & Julianne Hough

Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough will star in Safe Haven, the latest Nicholas Sparks novel to be turned into a movie. Lasse Hallström, Oscar nominated for My Life As a Dog and The Cider House Rules, has been assigned to direct the romantic drama for Relativity Media.

Safe Haven revolves around a young woman (Julianne Hough) who becomes the talk to the (small North Carolina) town after she becomes much too intimate with a widowed father (Josh Duhamel). Filming should commence in July. For the time being, the Safe Haven release date is a Valentine’s Day-friendly February 2013.

Nicholas Sparks movie adaptations aren’t expensive to make, and they’re reliable box office performers in North America – though considerably less so overseas. The current big screen adaptation of a Sparks novel is the Zac Efron-Taylor Schilling romantic melodrama The Lucky One, which has collected $58.5 million in North America, in addition to $29.4 million internationally, for a worldwide cume of $89.8 million. The Lucky One cost a reported $25 million; if that amount is accurate, the Efron movie earned back its production budget in North America alone.

Among Josh Duhamel’s screen credits are both romantic comedies and dramas (Life As We Know It, When in Rome, New Year’s Day), in addition to a series of perfect date movies (Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise). Julianne Hough is featured in the upcoming Tom Cruise movie Rock of Ages. Hough’s previous film credits are the musicals Footloose, with Kenny Wormald, and Burlesque, with Cher and Christina Aguilera.

Lasse Hallström, 66, has directed two Best Picture Academy Award nominees, the Tobey Maguire-Michael Caine drama The Cider House Rules and the Juliette Binoche-Johnny Depp romantic confection Chocolat. Hallström’s other credits include What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which earned Leonardo DiCaprio a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod; The Shipping News, with Judi Dench, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Kevin Spacey; and the popular Nicholas Sparks adaptation Dear John, which starred Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried.

Hallström is currently shooting The Hypnotist. The Swedish crime thriller features Tobias Zilliacus, Helena af Sandeberg, Lena Olin, and Mikael Persbrandt.

Carl Franklin City of Night: LAPD Corruption

Carl Franklin to direct City of Night, which is not a movie version of John Rechy’s novel about a gay sex worker. Instead, this City of Night, from a screenplay by David Chisholm, is set inside the Los Angeles Police Department.

The following synopsis comes courtesy of TheWrap: “Emmett Conlin [is] a rookie cop who joins the Los Angeles Police Department’s toughest crime unit. Conlin is drawn into a web of deceit and corruption that threatens his job and his life.”

Does this sound like a Training Day remake? That cop flick about the putrid underbelly of the LAPD (and of Los Angeles as city) was directed by Antoine Fuqua, and starred eventual Oscar winner Denzel Washington as the scuzzy cop and Ethan Hawke as the babe-in-the-woods rookie. Considering that Hawke somehow managed to make his absurd character believable, he fully deserved his Oscar nomination (though in the wrong category, as Hawke is Training Day‘s de facto lead).

Carl Franklin, 63, has directed a handful features, among those Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), with Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle; the cancer drama One True Thing (1998), which earned Meryl Streep a Best Actress Oscar nomination; and Out of Time (2003), with Washington and Eva Mendes. Following a nine-year hiatus mostly spent directing for television, Franklin returned with the feature Bless Me, Ultima, based on Rodolfo Anaya’s (excellent) novel. Luke Ganalon and Miriam Colon star.

Gong Li ‘Marco Polo’ Movie

Gong Li in (but not as) Marco Polo? Director Tarsem Singh (Immortals / Mirror Mirror) and producer Gianni Nunnari (300 / 300: Battle of Artemisia) are reportedly working on a film project about the life of the Italian explorer, previously incarnated on screen by the likes of Gary Cooper (in Archie Mayo’s The Adventures of Marco Polo, 1938), Rory Calhoun (Piero Pierotti and Hugo Fregonese’s Marco Polo, 1962), Horst Buchholz (Denys de La Patellière and Raoul Lévy’s Marco the Magnificent, 1965), and Ian Somerhalder (Kevin Connor’s TV movie Marco Polo, 2007).

According to Screen Daily, the Chinese Gong Li would play a Mongolian princess. In Memoirs of a Geisha Gong played a Japanese geisha. She hasn’t played any Swedes yet, I don’t think, even though that would be karmic. After all, Swedish-born Warner Oland was a frequent “Chinaman,” including Charlie Chan, in numerous Hollywood movies of the ’20s and ’30s.

The English-language production – if this Marco Polo movie does indeed get off the ground – would be a joint US/China venture, as per Gong Li herself. Gong, who referred to Singh as an “audacious filmmaker,” discussed the project at the Cannes Film Festival, where she was one of the presenters at the Palme d’Or ceremony.

Zhang Yimou’s muse in the ’90s and one of the greatest film actresses of the last quarter century, Gong starred in several of the director’s most acclaimed productions, including Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, To Live, and Shanghai Triad. Following their personal and professional split, she was featured in movies for Chen Kaige (Temptress Moon), Wong Kar-Wai (2046), and Peter Webber (Hannibal Rising). Zhang and Gong were reunited for Curse of the Golden Flower in 2004. Released last year, Gong’s last movie was the Chinese version of the Mel Gibson / Helen Hunt comedy What Women Want, co-starring Andy Lau.

Life of Pi Movie Release Date

Ang Lee’s 3D movie Life of Pi has been moved from Dec. 21 to Nov. 21, 20th Century Fox has announced. Life of Pi, which generated enthusiastic buzz following its screening at ComicCon a few weeks ago, is already considered a top contender next awards season. (Note: Life of Pi was originally scheduled to open on Dec. 14.)

By moving Life of Pi to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Fox is avoiding going neck and neck with the following Dec. 21 openings: Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty, with Chris Pratt, Jessica Chastain, and Joel Edgerton; Christopher McQuarrie’s crime drama One Shot (addendum: retitled Jack Reacher), with Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike; and another Judd Apatow comedy, This is 40, with Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy.

In addition to the Dec. 14 debuts of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and the musical Les Misérables, directed by The King’s Speech‘s Tom Hooper, and starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, and Helena Bonham Carter. And not to mention two Christmas Day releases: Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, with Leonardo DiCaprio; and Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, with once again Leonardo DiCaprio, in addition to Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, and Joel Edgerton.

Opening along with Life of Pi on Nov. 21 are Peter Ramsey’s animated Rise of the Guardians, featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman and Isla Fischer, and David O. Russell’s comedy Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper, Julia Stiles, and Robert De Niro. And Nov. 16 marks the debut of the final Twilight movie, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.

Also worth noting is that a couple of days ago, Paramount announced that Jon M. Chu-Channing Tatum’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation would be moved from June 2012 to March 2013 so the action flick could be released in 3D – a box office magnet overseas.

Now, is it a good idea to open two Leonardo DiCaprio movies on the same day? Will we see more last-minute switching around of release dates?

Life of Pi: The adventures of a zookeeper’s son

The tale of a boy, the son of a zookeeper, and his adventures, Life of Pi was adapted by Finding Neverland screenwriter David Magee from Yann Martel’s novel. The film features newcomer Suraj Sharma as the young Pi, Irrfan Khan as the older Pi, Tobey Maguire (as Martel), Academy Award nominee Gérard Depardieu (Cyrano de Bergerac, 1990), Tabu, Adil Hussain, and Ayush Tandon.

Ang Lee won a Best Director Oscar for Brokeback Mountain in early 2006. The widely acclaimed gay “cowboy” drama starred Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams.

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi movie photo: 20th Century Fox.