This week:

Baz Luhrmann gets Gatsby; Brian Helgeland adds Salt; Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise believe that four times is a charm and Parmount Pictures finally get to know Jack!

Box Office

It was the battle of the A-Listers at the box office and against all odds Jim Carrey captured the top spot with Yes Man. A weekend take of $19 million should ensue. Will Smith had to vacate his usual number one position and settle for the runner-up place with Seven Pounds. The drama should make around $15 million this weekend. The Day The Earth Stood Still crashed and burned this weekend dropping a mighty 75% and grossing just $10 million. It looks like the Keanu Reeves film will have to make its coin back on DVD. Not good. You hear that Fox?

Four Christmases grossed another $8 million helping the “comedy” cross the magic $100 million mark. Ho Ho Ho! Gran Torino grossed $115,000 from 19 locations and the Mickey Rourke drama The Wrestler might make $200, 000 only four theatres. What a body slam!

Movie News

1. The Great Gatsby will return to the big screen under the direction of Australia helmer Baz Luhrmann. The film, which is based on the legendary novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the tale of Gatsby, a lonely millionaire and his long lost love Daisy Buchanan.

The book is a masterpiece and I’m quite fond of the 1970’s Robert Redford film, so I’m pretty interested to see how this turns out.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

2. Oscar winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland has been hired to polish Kurt Wimmer’s script for the Angelina Jolie action film Salt (formerly Edwin A. Salt).

Phillip Noyce will direct the film which Sony hopes will become a major franchise for the studio.

Source: Daily Script

3. Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise must have enjoyed working together on the forthcoming Valkyrie as the duo have three other projects on the boil. McQuarrie will co-write Flying Tigers which is:

” based on the volunteer fighter squadron formed to help the Chinese fight the Japanese before the U.S. entered World War II.”

According to Variety:

“McQuarrie also is writing and producing with Guillermo del Toro the previously announced United Artists project The Champions, penning the script with an eye toward hammering it into a Cruise vehicle. The British TV series transfer concerns a team of government agents rescued from a plane crash in the Himalayas by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities.”

McQuarrie is currently rewriting Jullian Fellows’ The Tourist, a spy thriller in which Cruise will star with Charlize Theron.

Source: Variety

4. It looks like Paramount Pictures will soon have a script for their Jack Ryan reboot. Hossein Amini will write the script for the film which has no title, no star, no director and until now no story (that we know of). At he very least it should get some talent interested.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

That’s it for now. See you at the movies.