Tag: Movie News

Rupert Sanders to direct Van Helsing?

On the one hand, Sanders turned in a successful debut picture for Universal with Snow White And The Huntsman, a film that may not have been a massive blockbuster success but certainly turned a tidy bit of business for the studio and teed up what could very well end up being a successful franchise. Clearly Sanders is someone Universal wants to keep in the fold.

But then, on the other hand, there is Sanders’ well publicized dalliance with Snow White star Kristen Stewart. And while it is nearly impossible to separate truth from pure gossip on that front when it comes to the sequel / spinoff, who will and won’t star, who will and won’t direct, and – more to the point – why people will or won’t star or direct, what has become very clear is that the whole Snow White franchise has become a little bit toxic as long as Sanders is attached to it.

So, what to do? You’re a studio with a director who has proven himself to be a sound investment but who also carries a whole whack of baggage with him should he continue along his original path. The answer is simple: Having already proven that he can revise and revitalize one classic literary figure, let him do it to another.

Twitch has learned that Sanders and Universal have engaged in some early and still relatively casual conversations about Universal’s upcoming Van Helsing with the sides expressing a mutual interest in doing the project with one another. Tom Cruise is attached to both produce and star as the titular vampire hunter in the Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman penned story. Cruise is currently filming All You Need Is Kill with Van Helsing a strong possibility to be his next project after that, meaning Universal need to lock down a director fairly quickly and this would certainly seem to play to Sanders’ skill set while also allowing a bit of breathing space for the director before the Snow White spinoff that he is rumored to be directing./blockquote>

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Tom Cruise to star in Magnificent Seven remake?

MGM are thought to have their latest remake in their sights, with Variety reporting that Tom Cruise is set to star in a new version of The Magnificent Seven.

The film is the latest in a long line of remakes currently in the works at the studio, with versions of Carrie, Poltergeist and RoboCop all at various stages in the production process.

Cruise himself is also on a remake tip at present, with this latest news coming hot on the heels of the announcement that he will star in Universal’s forthcoming Van Helsing remake. Cruise has apparently been a long-standing fan of The Magnificent Seven, although he’s thought to be waiting for the film to be greenlit before officially signing on.

The original film (itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) tells the story of a group of gunslingers hired by a village of Mexican peasants to run off a marauding gang of banditos. Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen headed up the all-star cast.

No word as yet on release dates or further casting, but MGM will look to get this one off the ground as soon as possible so as to secure a spot in Cruise’s busy schedule. Time to start assembling those fantasy ensembles…

Les Grossman Movie Spin-Off?

There’s talks of a Tropic Thunder Spin-off featuring Les Grossman, I’m not sure if I like the idea. I liked the character cause it was small, I don’t see it working very well as a full movie. Here’s the article from Collider:

Screenwriter Michael Bacall is poised to be in high demand very, very soon. He co-wrote the wonderful Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with Edgar Wright, and he has two high-profile projects set to open weeks apart from each other: the much buzzed about 21 Jump Street and the Todd Phillips-produced Project X. In 2010 he was set to write a spinoff film for Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman character in Tropic Thunder, but we haven’t heard much about the project in quite some time.

Steve got the chance to sit down with Bacall to talk about 21 Jump Street and Project X, and while we’ll have the full interview up closer to the release of those films we wanted to share with you a few bits regarding the Les Grossman movie right away. Bacall confirmed that he wrote an R-rated script and revealed that it’s actually “a pretty heartfelt story.” Hit the jump for more.

Regarding the status of the film, Bacall said that it’s more to do with Cruise’s schedule than a development hold-up:

“Paramount has the draft and I gather that they’re pretty happy with it. I think Tom Cruise probably has a lot of stuff on his plate right now (laughs) and I think it’ll be a schedule thing more than anything.”

The scribe confirmed that he intends for the pic to be R-rated and revealed that we’ll be delving a bit into who Les Grossman is:

“I wrote it for R because we had precedent with Tropic Thunder. It’s actually a pretty heartfelt story. I had a lot of meetings with Mr. Cruise and Mr. Stiller and it was crazy, it was a blast. I think we came up with some really fun stuff to give you an insight into who the guy is, so I’m hopeful that that’ll get up and running soon.”

Though Grossman seemed to be an all-around terrible person in Tropic Thunder, it sounds as though we’ll be getting into why he’s such a despicable human being. I thought Cruise was surprisingly great as Grossman and I’m eager to see what kind of story Bacall, Cruise and Stiller have cooked up. I also sincerely hope that Bill Hader returns as Grossman’s right-hand man. The guy has insane comedic range and stole more than a few scenes in Tropic Thunder, so one imagines he’ll be back.

It may be a while before Cruise’s schedule opens up. He’s currently filming One Shot, he’s next set to star in Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi pic Oblivion, and he recently committed to Doug Liman’s All You Need Is Kill. Hopefully he gets to Les Grossman sooner rather than later, as I’m excited to see how this project comes together.

Tom Cruise Talks Top Gun 2

Tom Cruise talks to MTV about Top Gun 2. There’s a video on their website, which I can’t watch in my region (>.>). Here is the article from MTV.com:

“We’re working on it.”

That’s the official word on “Top Gun 2,” straight from the star himself, Tom Cruise, who spoke with MTV News’ Josh Horowitz during an event in Dubai for

In the fourth “M:I” movie, Cruise returns as castoff secret agent Ethan Hunt — the only character he has ever revisited during his decades-long career. The question remains: Will he ever don the Navy jumpsuit again and hop into a cockpit as Maverick?

A little more than a year ago, the Internet went abuzz with rumors about Cruise, director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer reuniting for a potential “Top Gun” sequel. Scott confirmed he would be directing, but Cruise’s involvement remained a mystery.

When Christopher McQuarrie, the writer of “The Usual Suspects” and the man hired to pen the script for “Top Gun 2,” said Maverick would be the lead for the follow-up, all engines seemed go. But then things went quiet. As the major players moved on to other projects — including “One Shot,” directed by McQuarrie and starring Cruise — sequel talk died down.

When Horowitz sat down with Cruise in Dubai, the actor updated the project’s status and shed new light on the script. “I don’t think Chris [McQuarrie] is going to write it,” Cruise said. “Chris is directing ‘One Shot’ right now, which I’m acting. We’ve got to go back in January and finish it.”

With McQuarrie out, that leaves Cruise, Scott and Bruckheimer as the only major players left with the project, but Cruise insists he could still do a sequel.

“I said to Tony I want to make another movie with him. He and I haven’t made a film since ‘Days of Thunder,’ ” Cruise said. “Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas of where it is now. I thought, ‘Wow, that would be … what we could do now.’ ”

For Cruise, the two key elements to a sequel would be a worthy script and the freedom to make the movie as they did in 1986. “I hope we can figure this out to go do it again,” he said. “If we can find a story that we all want to do, we all want to make a film that is in the same kind of tone as the other one and shoot it in the same way as we shot ‘Top Gun.’ ”

Cruise cues ‘All You Need Is Kill’

After sitting in development limbo for many months, “All You Need Is Kill” may finally be on the fast track as Tom Cruise has agreed to star.

Based on the graphic novel, the original story is in the vein of “Groundhog Day,” with a twist: A soldier in a war against aliens finds himself reliving his last day over and over after being killed. Through the training and battles he experiences in these time loops, he becomes a better soldier.

While a deal with the studio isn’t officially signed, Cruise has been weighing this role for some time after continued talks with director Doug Liman.

Sources say Warners. prexy Jeff Robinov always wanted a big star, though the script called for a younger actor like Ryan Gosling or Joseph Gordon Levitt. Studio has already had the script rewritten to make the character fit Cruise’s age.

Dante Harper penned the script with Joby Harold doing the rewrite. Sources said Cruise liked the script so much that Liman traveled to Pittsburgh, where the thesp was shooting Paramount and Skydance’s “One Shot,” to meet with the actor about the role.

Another important development: Liman, who’s been onboard to direct “Kill” for some time, has lined it up as his next project. For months, Liman had been weighing doing this or the Paramount space adventure “Luna,” which struggled to assemble financing and saw David Ellison’s Skydance Productions drop out — forcing Liman to turn to “Kill” for now.

Cruise’ busy schedule could enable Liman to do both: After “One Shot,” Cruise is expected to shoot the Universal sci-fier “Oblivion” in March, then start on “Kill” in the late third/early fourth quarter of 2012. No start date is yet set.

Cruise, repped by CAA, can be seen next in Par and Skydance’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which bows Dec. 16, followed by New Line’s “Rock of Ages” next summer.

Erwin Stoff, Tom Lassally and Jason Hoffs are producing through 3 Arts Entertainment.

Harold is an exec producer on the project.

Source: Variety

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol Set for Early Imax Release in U.K.

Paramount Pictures and Imax to preview movie in large format before wide release.

LONDON – U.K. previews of Tom Cruise starrer Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol will be on Imax screens almost a week ahead of its wide rollout across British screens.

Imax and Paramount Pictures said the plan would be the first time a U.K. movie has been released early in Imax theaters.

The aim from both is to reinforce the “event nature” of the movie, some of which director Brad Bird shot scenes for using Imax cameras.

One of them sees Cruise scaling part of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, before performing a dizzying stunt by running down part of it attached to a fire hose.

Bird’s movie sees Cruise star alongside Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton.

The picture will play big in Imax in the U.K. from Dec. 21 this year before going wide from Dec. 26 everywhere.

Imax also announced it is teaming with U.K. exhibition giant Cineworld Group for a revenue sharing agreement to install three new digital IMAX® theater systems in England and Scotland.

The systems will be installed in existing multiplexes in Edinburgh, Sheffield and Nottingham.

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Tom Cruise In ‘We Are Mortals’? Star In Talks For Doug Liman Film

And a new rumour/possible movie for Tom “We Are Mortals”, based on a futuristic war manga, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka called “All We Need Is Kill“, which is for sale on Amazon. Huffington Post reports:

Is Tom Cruise mortal?

It’s a legitimate question, given his wrinkle-free face and action star moves as he reaches 50 years of age. He’s featuring this winter in “Mission: Impossible 4,” will star in the violence-galore upcoming Jack Reacher adaptation “One Shot,” and will play a futuristic soldier repairman in “Cloud Atlas.”

The question of Cruise’s mortality will be addressed in a new, manga-inspired way, if all things go as planned, in yet another gun-toting badass role in “We Are Mortals.” Of course, that’s what we heard about Brad Pitt, too.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cruise is in talks to join the Doug Liman-directed “We Are Mortals,” an adaptation of the futuristic Japanese war manga, “All You Need Is Kill.” Cruise would play a soldier who dies in the first day of combat in an intergalactic war, but is brought back to life each day to fight and die once again (and Bill Murray thought he had it bad).

Previously, Vulture had reported that Pitt was in talks for the role, which made sense since Liman directed his 2005 film, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” which not only made a lot of money at the box office, but ended up making a lot of money for tabloids, too.

Horizons cast news

News from the movie Horizons!

Universal Pictures has finally settled on Jessica Chastain to play one of the female leads in Horizons. We reported last month Jessica Chastain was one of five finalists, along with Olivia Wilde, Brit Marling, Noomi Rapace and Olga Kurylenko.

The story is set in a world where the Earth has become too toxic for humans, with society moving to cities built above the clouds. Tom Cruise plays one of the last men on Earth, a repair man who discovers a mysterious woman has crash landed on the planet. They both set off on a journey that causes them to question everything they know about Earth.

The two female lead roles are the mysterious woman and Tom Cruise’s wife. It isn’t known which of these roles Jessica Chastain is in talks for. It is also believed that one of the other actresses mentioned may land the other female lead.

Joseph Kosinski is directing Horizons from a script by Karl Gajdusek and William Monahan. Joseph Kosinski created the graphic novel which the project is based on. Production is scheduled to begin this winter, with a July 19, 2013 release date already set by Universal.

Source

“Horizons” looking for Female Lead

Tom’s new project Horizons (formely known as Oblivion) is on the look for it’s female lead, Variety (via Showblitz) reports. (I’d love to see Olivia Wilde get the part!). Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) will be directing and the movie is set it for a July 19, 2013 release.

Here’s the article from Huffington Post:

Above all else, Tom Cruise is still a major movie star. And as such, being his film love interest is a major shot of exposure and star power, a boost A-list actresses openly seek as aggressively as they did during Cruise’s 80s and 90s heyday.

According to Variety, no fewer than five top actresses are vying to co-star with Cruise in “Horizons,” the re-titled big screen adaptation of Joseph Kosinski’s “Oblivion,” which has been retitled to “Horizons.” Cruise will play a “scavenger” court marshaled into serving as a lone soldier stuck on an uninhabitable Earth’s surface, fixing drones that protect the planet — and its sky-bound clone citizens, who live above the polluted clouds — from attacking aliens. A numbed being, when he finds a beautiful woman in a fallen ship, adventure and an awakening of a past life love ensue.

Amongst the names competing to play that beautiful woman in a fallen ship are Jessica Chastain, Olivia Wilde, and Brit Marling, three of the hottest commodities in Hollywood. Chastain has had an absolute breakout of a year in 2011, starring in “The Tree of Life,” “The Help,” and the upcoming films “The Debt,” “Take Shelter,” “Wilde Salome” and “Texas Killing Fields.”

Wilde has also had a big year, featuring in “Cowboys & Aliens,” “The Change-Up,” and set to feature in the upcoming “In Time.” She has a history with Kosinski, having co-starred in his “Tron: Legacy” in 2010.

As for Marling, she is perhaps the newest and hottest commodity; she wrote and starred in the indie hit “Another Earth,” and in 2012 will star in “Arbitrage,” “The Company You Keep,” which she wrote and will feature in with Alexander Skarsgard, and “The Company You Keep,” with Shia LaBeouf.

This is the second big leading lady hunt for a Cruise flick this month; earlier, at least three actresses tried out for the actress lead in “One Shot,” another action adaptation, with the role eventually going to Rosamund Pike.

Paper Wings: New movie?

Some rumours are going around that Tom Cruise will be working on Paper Wings, which is currently eyeing Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones) as director. It’s rumoured that Tom will be working on the script developement, and possibly starring. Here is the full story from Variety.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Brian Kirk, the “Game of Thrones” helmer who’s in talks to direct “Thor 2,” is also in negotiations to take the reins of Sony’s rodeo pic “Paper Wings,” which is being developed as a potential starring vehicle for Tom Cruise.

Overbrook Entertainment and Temple Hill Entertainment are teaming to produce the Les Bohem-scripted pic, which follows a rodeo champ who falls for an up-and-coming country singer.

Prior to Kirk’s attachment, there hadn’t been any movement on the long-gestating project since last summer, when Cruise, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith performed a table read at the Saddle Ranch Chop House in Hollywood.

While there are no actors officially attached, sources tell Variety that Cruise had a hand in selecting Kirk for the gig and will work with the helmer to develop the script.

Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey are producing for Temple Hill, while Overbrook’s principals include Will Smith, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith and Ken Stovitz, who is running point on the project.

Bohem and Bowen developed the romance story after meeting at the 2005 Nashville Screenwriters Conference. Charles Stone was previously attached to direct “Paper Wings” when it was set up at New Line back in 2006.

Kirk will make his studio debut with Marvel’s “Thor 2,” which Disney will release on July 26, 2013. Irish filmmaker has directed episodes of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” Showtime’s “Dexter” and BBC’s “Luther,” as well as episodes of HBO’s upcoming series “Luck” and BBC’s three-part adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations.”

CAA reps Cruise and Kirk, who’s also repped by Independent Talent Group.

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