Gawker: defamer, out of ideas

Denzel Washington Is The New Walter Matthau

Mark — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:06:02 EDT

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Unoriginality Is Easy As 1-2-3 Edition: Denzel Washington will star in director Tony Scott's sure-to-be incomprehensible remake of The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, assuming a role originally played by Walter Matthau and not-so-memorably reprised by Edward James Olmos in a 1998 made-for-TV version. [Variety]
· NBC throws money at big-name screenwriters for its Heroes: Origins spinoff, signing up X2/Superman Returns co-writer Michael Dougherty and Hostel's Eli Roth to script episodes tackling the backstory issues of the hit series' characters, such as why Ali Larter's evil reflection is so angry all the time. [THR]
· Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac will star in the Dimension comedy Soul Men, a project that regrettably is in no way related to the classic, similarly titled C. Thomas Howell/Rae Dawn Chong self-tanning farce of 1986. [Variety]
· The Family Guy's Very Special Star Wars-Themed Episode posts a "strong" performance in its ultimately doomed Nielsen attack against NBC's Sunday Night Football. [THR]
· Kevin Spacey will return to TV (well, sort of) after a 16-year hiatus, starring in HBO's Recount as the Gore campaign chief of staff who challenged the disputed balloting in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. [Variety]

Disney Needlessly Upgrading Tron To Version 2.0

Mark — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:42:27 EDT

· Because that weekend-house mortgage isn't going to pay itself, Don Cheadle signs on for the Emma Roberts vehicle Hotel for Dogs (plot more or less self-explanatory). [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Recycling Lightcycles Edition: Newly assigned Logan's Run director Joseph Kosinski is in "final negotiations to develop and direct" a new Tron movie from a top-secret idea by two Lost writers, a cutting-edge take rumored to involve Tron Guy's efforts to escape the YouTubes after being digitized into the viral video world by the evil Master Control Program. [THR]
· Fear of the looming labor apocalypse leads Roman Polanski to withdraw from his megabudgeted Pompeii project. [Variety]
· Cinea discontinues production of the magical, privacy-preventing DVD player that could play enchanted Oscar screeners issued by the MPAA's copyright-respecting wizards. [THR]
· Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson's Dreamgirls catfighting experience should come in handy on the set of the Sex and the City movie, where she'll play Carrie Bradshaw's assistant. [Variety]

Recycling The Barbarian

Mark — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:30:20 EDT

· James Gandolfini and HBO's eight-year relationship is still going strong, as The Artist Who Will Forever Be Known As Tony will star in and produce the movie ABCD Camp, in which he'll play Sonny Vaccaro, the guy who signed Michael Jordan to the first million dollar shoe deal. [Variety]
· The trades eulogize Merv Griffin, but no review of the TV mogul's legacy could be as poignant as three minutes spent watching "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." [Variety, THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, To Crush My Enemies, To See Them Driven Before Me, and To Hear The Lamentations of the D-Girls Edition: Millenium Films pays a seven figures for the rights to make a new series of Conan the Barbarian movies. There's no word about whether Arnold Schwarzenegger would be willing to abandon his political career for a shot at reprising one of his most successful roles. (But wishful thinking on the matter is nonetheless encouraged.) [Variety]
· Joseph Gordon-Levitt still keeping it real, signing on for two more indie features. Don't worry, eventually Hollywood will break him they way it did Sevigny and Posey. [THR]
· All of this strike talk is really fucking up some rich people's summer vacations. [Variety]

'The Jetsons' One Step Closer To Becoming Ill-Advised, Live-Action Motion Picture

Mark — Wed, 09 May 2007 15:54:19 EDT

· The Weinstein Co. (with help from their besties at Lionsgate) will release Michael Moore's documentary Sicko on July 29th, which should do for America's health care system what Bowling for Columbine did for a senile-seeming, rifle-loving Charlton Heston. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Even In The Prehistoric Past And Distant Future Edition: Robert Rodriguez is in talks to direct a live-action feature adaptation of The Jetsons, and has also met with Universal about Will Ferrell's adaptation of Land of the Lost. [THR]
· Universal lands its second Serious Actor for its The Incredible Hulk project, as Tim Roth is in negotiations to play Hulk antagonist Abomination and spend long hours discussing how best to portray the emotional torment of gamma-wave-poisoning sufferers in the context of a superhero film. [Variety]
· FX may pay up to $40 million for the TV rights to Spider-Man 3 for five years, but only once it completes it pay-cable run on Starz. [THR]
· Var TV critic and Entourage nemesis Brian Lowry is amused that his HBO stand-in, who'll be harassed by an aggrieved Johnny Drama in an upcomnig episode shot in the paper's offices, has an assistant. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Unimaginative Studio To Reimagine Tarzan

Mark — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:59:42 EST

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Back to the Jungle, Again Edition: Warner Bros. and producer Jerry Weintraub are developing a "new take" on Tarzan; only the potential involvement of director Guillermo del Toro gives us hope the project might evolve into something other than an excuse to put Ashton Kutcher in a loincloth. [Variety]
Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records, dies at the age of 83. [THR]
Director RJ Cutler will follow around Vogue's Anna Wintour as she prepares the magazine's fifty-pound fall fashion issue, hoping to capture documentary footage of the assistant-abusing atrocities fictionalized in The Devil Wears Prada. [Variety]
· CBS wins a "quiet" Thursday night in the ratings behind CSI and Survivor; Meanwhile, The OC continues to tank. How long until they stunt-kill Chino or Seth? [THR]
Scott Rudin and Miramax are adapting Pulitzer-winning play Doubt for film. Playwright John Patrick Shanley will write and direct the movie version, planning on using a liberal amount of NY location shooting to avoid that not-so-fresh, "this still feels like a play" feeling that afflicts so many stage-to-screen adaptations. [Variety]

Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Cyborgs With Feathered Hair Edition: 'Bionic Woman' Rebuilt

Mark — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:47:09 EDT

Today's Variety reports that somewhere within NBC, a development executive desperate for the kinds of groundbreaking ideas that might one day lift his network out of the Nielsen sub-basement has instead retreated to the half-remembered shows of his childhood, committing to a script for a potential Bionic Woman series. (For those who don't remember the original, late 70s spinoff, it was the story of a woman who had certain body parts enhanced or replaced by bionic technology so that she could better crush tennis balls with her bare hand and withstand the physical rigors of intimate encounters with her similarly semi-robotic boyfriend, the Six Million Dollar Man.) Executive producer David Eick, who recently revived Battlestar Galactica for the Sci-Fi Channel, promises to completely rebuild his Bionic Woman, not merely drag Lindsay Wagner out of storage and oil up her robotic joints:

Instead of focusing on terrorism and militarism, the new "Bionic" will explore the role of professional women in contemporary society and how they juggle their various roles.
"It's using the idea of artificial technology as a metaphor for what contemporary women sometimes feel is necessary to do everything that needs to be done," Eick said. .

It's difficult not to try to work backward to the pitch based on the soundbites Eick gave Var; we can almost hear him excitedly describing his "reconceptualization" as Bionic Soccer Mom, or, and please forgive us for even going here, "Desperate Housewives, but if Felicity Huffman had super-hearing and two robotic arms."

'Bionic' skein rebuilt at NBC [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Hollywood Loves The Emmys!

Mark — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:27:08 EDT

· The trades have Emmy fever! Browse their lists of this year's nominees and join in the fun! [Variety, THR]
· The stars react to their nominations with an refreshing mix of humility, surprise, and surprised humility! Really, it's an honor just to be reading about these nominations. [Variety, THR ]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Defiling Christmas Edition: The evil stocking-plunderers at NBC will make a completely unnecessary live-action version of the 1974 stop-motion animation classic The Year Without a Santa Claus, with John Goodman starring as Santa. [Variety]
· David Duchovny, whom we'd assumed had given up acting for a quieter life bagging groceries somewhere in Montana, will join Benicio del Toro and Halle Berry in the highly buzzed about DreamWorks project Things We Lost in the Fire. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning is among 120 new invitees to join AMPAS, all of whom she plans to ruthlessly slaughter in an attempt to show fellow Academy members who's going to be running things for the next forty years. [Variety]

Hollywood Out Of Ideas: Special 'Click' Edition

Mark — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:38:04 EDT

To celebrate today's release of Adam Sandler's Click, which by now you surely know concerns the wackiness—with heart!—that ensues when a man comes to possess a remote control that can manipulate the real world, the Ironic Sans blog shared a post listing ten other projects whose creators were diddled by the same "magic remote" muse. A taste:

· Benny Hill. His Golden Classics DVD contains a skit called "Henry's Remote Control" in which "Benny discovers he can control the real world with his remote control and sets off on his journey, leaving his nagging wife in 'freeze-frame' mode."
· George Jetson. In a 1985 episode of The Jetsons, "George Jetson happens to sit next to a brilliant, but unrecognized genius. This genius has invented the one-of-a kind Re-Play-Ola. The genius decides to give it to George because the genius can always make another one. The Re-Play-Ola has the ability to rewind time, allowing the person who possesses it, the ability to rewind, modify, erase, and the unusable stop button."

· R.L. Stine. He wrote a short story called "Click" for his Goosebumps books that was eventually adapted into an episode of the Goosebumps TV series. From tv.com: "Seth Gold is sick of being ordered around by his sister, his mother, and his father. His hobby is channel-surfing, so he orders a remote from a company in a magazine... Seth notices it can also be used to change the radio station... As a joke, Seth presses the Pause button while aiming the remote at his sister. His sister actually pauses! Seth now realizes this new remote can control more than just the TV."

We almost feel sad for Sony, who paid $1.75 million for the Click spec script that planted the latest flag in this frequently claimed storytelling territory. They probably could've optioned the rights to that episode of George Jetson's life story for a fraction of that price.

Remote Remake [Ironic Sans]

Trade Round-Up: "Vendetta" Bumped To March, But Not Because Of Touchy London Bombing Reasons

Mark — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 14:33:01 EDT

· In the wake of the "smackdown" that it received in the recently-ended Michael Ovitz trial, Disney amends its board rules to make it "easier to remove directors and tougher to buy off angry shareholders." The next guy who tries to hire his "life partner" and then fire him a year later with a $140 million parting gift has finally been put on notice. [Variety]
· Disney Smackdown Day continues, as the theater owners association bitchslaps CEO-in-waiting Bob Iger for his comments about shrinking the window between the theatrical and DVD release of movies, and calling this year's studio product "not as good." Aww snap, etc etc. [THR]
· Warner Brothers pushes Wachowski Bros. film V is for Vendetta from a November to March release date, blaming post-production problems (four months of problems?), not its now-touchy plot involving terrorism in London. [Variety]
· Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci are in "early negotiations" to star with Clive Owen in the winkingly titled action project Shoot 'Em Up. Giamatti would play the bad guy (we were kind of hoping for mouthy sidekick), and Bellucci star Clive Owen's love interest. But if they really want to shake up the genre, why not swap their roles? There'd be something magic about Owen and Giamatti doing that special movie tango of sexual tension. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Hoo-ah Edition: Al Pacino will star in a remake/update of the 1955 French heist flick Rififi. [Variety]