James Franco has cast Val Lauren in Sal, Franco’s planned biopic of two-time Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Sal Mineo, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Based on Michael Gregg Michaud’s Sal Mineo: A Biography, Sal is slated to begin filming in the Los Angeles area in early summer. Franco’s production company Rabbit Bandini is behind the project.
Among Lauren’s credits are supporting roles in Christian McIntire’s Landspeed (2002) and Johnny Lin’s Queen of Hearts (2009). He also had guest roles in several television series, including Hawaii Five-0 and Monk.
Sal Mineo is best known for his two Oscar-nominated performances: The doe-eyed teenager infatuated with James Dean in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 drama Rebel Without a Cause and the young Jewish man and former Nazi rape victim turned Zionist radical in Otto Preminger’s 1960 drama Exodus.
Mineo’s other credits include and The Gene Krupa Story (1959) and the cult psychological drama Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965).
Sal Mineo was 37 when he was murdered in West Hollywood in 1976.
(Maybe) in the works, zombie comedy The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet possibly to star Judi Dench, Ian McKellen
In case this is an actual project and not just another online joke, The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet may make zombie movie non-aficionados reconsider their stance.
As per various online sources to be directed by Matthew Butler, if all goes as (reportedly) planned the curiously titled zombie comedy will feature none other than Oscar winner Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, 1998) and two-time nominee Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters, 1998; The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001), in addition to Gillian Anderson, and Mark Williams.
Co-written by director Butler and Tori Hart, the 18th century-set The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet is supposed to chronicle the plight of a seaside town’s denizens who suddenly come down with a deadly illness.
Online sources add that the feature is a sort of expanded version of Butler’s 2010 short E’gad Zombies, which features Ian McKellen.
The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet has a “tentative” 2014 release date.
Judi Dench out of The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet
November 2013 update: Judi Dench seems to be gone from Matthew Butler’s big-screen project The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet. If online sources are on target, Dench has been replaced by Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake, 2004).
Rachel Weisz & Johnny Depp in The Thin Man remake?
Rachel Weisz, Oscar winner for The Constant Gardener, may join Rob Marshall and Johnny Depp in the Warner Bros. remake of The Thin Man.
Depp is set to play dipsomaniac detective Nick Charles; according to reports, Weisz is being considered for the role of Nick’s equally dipsomaniac partner in crime-solving, Nora Charles.
William Powell and Myrna Loy became first-rank stars after playing Nick and Nora in W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 film adaptation – which is quite different from Dashiell Hammett’s considerably darker book. That was back in the day when MGM was a major Hollywood powerhouse.
The Thin Man earned Oscar nominations in the Best Picture, Best Actor (Powell), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay (Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett) categories. Loy was bypassed, which outraged many at the time.
Weisz’s latest vehicles haven’t performed well at the North American box office – e.g., The Lovely Bones, The Brothers Bloom – though the Alejandro Amenábar-directed Agora was a major hit in Spain, winning 7 Goya Awards.
Among Weisz’s most notable future projects is Oz: The Great and Powerful, in which she would get to play the witch Evanora.
Asta, Myrna Loy, and William Powell After the Thin Man image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher movie lands distributor
The Weinstein Company has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady, starring two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep (Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979; Sophie’s Choice, 1982) as the titular British prime minister.
Featuring Jim Broadbent as Thatcher’s husband, Denis, The Iron Lady is expected to hit U.S. theaters some time in 2011. That, of course, means the 17th Oscar nomination for Meryl Streep, and possibly a nod (whether as lead or supporting actor) for Jim Broadbent as well.
Remember, TWC was the company behind the multi-Oscared The King’s Speech.
Written by Abi Morgan, The Iron Lady is described thus in the TWC press release:
… a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century’s most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.
In other words, expect something along the lines of The Queen and The King’s Speech, instead of a hard-hitting (i.e., honest) portrait of the individual who did her utmost to destroy Britain’s welfare state and some of its democratic institutions.
TWC acquired The Iron Lady in partnership with Ron Burkle. It’s their third joint acquisition of 2011, following those of two Elizabeth Banks vehicles: Jesse Peretz’s Our Idiot Brother, also featuring Paul Rudd and Zooey Deschanel, and Jacob Aaron Estes’ The Details, with Tobey Maguire and Laura Linney.
Tommy Lee Jones and Joseph Gordon-Levitt join Lincoln
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln has added several prestigious names to its cast. Two-time Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis (as Abraham Lincoln) and Sally Field (as Lincoln’s wife, Mary Lincoln) will be joined by Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive, 1993) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Jones will play Republican leader and congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Gordon-Levitt will incarnate Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s eldest son.
Also in the extensive Lincoln cast are Oscar nominee and Water for Elephants costar Hal Holbrook, Oscar nominee John Hawkes, James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, and Joseph Cross.
Spielberg’s Lincoln is based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book Team of Rivals, about the political conflicts pitting the president against the men of his cabinet, some of whom were his rivals for the presidency.
The screenplay adaptation is by another Pulitzer Prize-winner, Tony Kushner, who had previously collaborated with Spielberg on the Oscar-nominated Munich.
Note: Kushner was in the news today for something unrelated to Lincoln: the board of City University of New York blocked a decision to give an honorary degree to the playwright, after university trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld accused Kushner of being anti-Israel. In addition to refuting the accusation, Kushner has lashed out against the CUNY board.
Filming of Lincoln should begin in late 2011/early 2012 in Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. Distributed by Disney’s Touchstone, Lincoln is expected to reach theaters in the fourth quarter of 2012. Whether this Spielberg effort will turn out to be another Schindler’s List or another Amistad is impossible to say.
It’s also unclear how well a movie about Civil War politics will fare at the box office. Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, starring Robin Wright and James McAvoy, hasn’t been doing well this spring. After three weekends, the $25 million production has taken in a mere $8.8 million domestically.
Later this year, two Spielberg-directed films hit theaters: War Horse, featuring Jeremy Irvine and Emily Watson, and The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, a motion-capture feature starring Jamie Bell as Tintin and Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock.
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