This week:
Vin Diesel offers up more Riddick; Jonah Hill and James Franco tell Brad Pitt a True Story; Bar Paly joins a model cast in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain; Mark Wahlberg seeks Headhunters; Kristen Wiig is a Descendant; Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the Veep and Scarlett Johansson takes a shower for Alfred Hitchcock.
1. Vin Diesel’s long-gestating Riddick is currently shooting and the action star is using his Facebook page to drum-up anticipation for the Pitch Black sequel.
Diesel has published a slew of set pictures on the social networking site – and you can check one out below:
Looks like Diesel and director David Twohy are going back to basics after the over-blown Chronicles of Riddick.
Source: Vin Diesel
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2. Jonah Hill is set to join James Franco in the Brad Pitt produced True Story.
Rupert Goold will direct the film which is based on the…er…true story of journalist Michael Finkel.
According to Deadline:
“Hill will play Finkel, who was a writer at The New York Times Magazine in 2002 when he learned that Christian Longo was captured in Mexico after a long stint on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List for killing his family. The strange part was that he had been living under the identity of Finkel. The very next day, the real Finkel was fired by the editors of The Times, right after they ran an editor’s note declaring that he had falsified parts of an investigative article. His career seemed over, until Longo (who’ll be played by Franco) declared that the real Finkel was the only journalist he would talk to. That led to a surreal relationship with the accused murderer, who was trying to declare his innocence. For the real Finkel, it was an opportunity to unravel the mystery and perhaps redeem himself as a journalist.”
Sounds like an off-beat and quirky story that might be an awards contender in the acting stakes. Hill has previously worked with Pitt on Moneyball.
Source: Deadline
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3. Michael Bay has cast supermodel Bar Paly and Monk’s Tony Shalhoub in Pain and Gain, a bodybuiding crime thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson.
Paly will…er… play “Sabina Petrescu, an illegal immigrant and former beauty queen who dreams of becoming the next Marilyn Monroe.” While Shaloub will take on the role of “Marc Schiller, the target of Wahlberg’s kidnapping scheme”
Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris and Rob Corddry co-star in the film, which Bay will squeeze in before Transformers 4.
Source: Variety
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4. Speaking of Mark Wahlberg, it looks like The Fighter star is set to remake the Norwegian thriller Headhunters.
Wahlberg called the art-thief thriller “one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time” revealing: “I met with the director and pleaded with the studio that has the rights so we’ll see if we get anywhere with that.”
Wahlberg is something of a remake machine with his recent Contraband, The Truth About Charlie, Planet of the Apes and The Italian Job having all been makeovers of existing films. Now, that’s a pretty mixed bag of hit, miss and disaster. Where will Headhunters fit in?
Source: Short List
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5. Poduction Company Indian Paintbrush has picked up an untitled pitch from Oscar Winners Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, with Kristen Wiig attached to star.
Little is known about the project from The Descendants writers other than it’s an action-comedy, and that there was something of a bidding war from the studios to buy it.
Source: Variety
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6. Veep is a new HBO comedy about a fictional U.S. vice-president. The show is a spin-off from The Thick of It starring Seinfeld‘s Julia Louis-Dreyfus – check out a trailer for it below.
Source: Youtube
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7. Scarlett Johansson and James D’Arcy are set to play Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in director Sacha Gervasi’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.
Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren have already been cast as the legendary director and his wife, Alma in the film which charts the making of his slasher classic.
I can see a resemblance between D’Arcy and Perkins, but Johansson looks nothing like Leigh.
Source: Variety
That’s it for now. See you at the movies.
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I’m really intrigued with the Hitchcock film.
It goes without saying that their are many big Hitchcock fans and I’m one of them with Rear Window, Psycho and Rope being my favorites. Ive read and watched almost everything I could find about the making of Psycho but I’d still love to see it as a film. I know Johansson may not look much like Janet Leigh but you have to admit she has what’s needed to fill the role (pun intended). And she can pull of the old Hollywood look.
I hope we get to see this this year but I suspect it won’t be until 2013.