Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: June 15 2008

I’ve been a very busy man this week, so I haven’t been posting that much. That will all change this week, and just to get the ball rolling we have a new and fantastic Weekend Movie News Wrap Up. This week we feature an A-list line up:

George Clooney becomes a Tourist, Harrison Ford dabbles in science, Amanda Peet gets her diary ready for 2012, The Three Musketeers make a comeback (come on – if Stallone can do it so can they!) Liam Nesson and James Nesbitt return to Ireland and Val Kilmer and 50 Cent make sweet music together.

1. George Clooney is being tapped to star in The Tourist, an adaptation of a Olen Steinhauer novel.

“The Tourist is a contemporary international thriller about a spy who risks everything to reveal a conspiracy after he’s accused of a murder he didn’t commit.”

It sounds a bit generic, but if Clooney has a hand in it expect it to have a 1970’s feel like Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor.

This could be a good franchise starter. Clooney will produce the script by Anthony Peckham with his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov.

Source: Variety

2. Harrison Ford will star in Crowley. The Robert Nelson Jacobs scripted film is based on the true story of John and Aileen Crowley, whose two children had a rare genetic disease, they found a researcher (to be played by Ford) who had a possible cure.

CBS Films hope that the film will be going into production soon. It doesn’t sound overly exciting, but I suspect that Ford might get his second Oscar nomination and that the film will under go a change of title.

Source: Variety

3. Amanda Peet has signed up to star in Roland Emmerich’s 2012. Peet will Co-star alonside John Cusack, Danny Glover and Oliver Platt. It’s the third teaming of Cusack and Peet following Identity and Martian Child.

The film should be going before cameras soon, that is if the SAG don’t strike.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

4. The Three Musketeers are making a return to the big screen. Millennium films plan a series of movies to show the adventures of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. The first film will show how the Musketeers first decided that they should be “One for all, and all for one.”

The youngest member of the group D’Artagnan may be introduced at the end of the first movie or in the second movie in the franchise.

The Alexandre Dumas novel has entered the public domain, so you could say that the rights are “free for all and all for one”

Sorry. It was either that or a Dumas joke.

Source: Variety

5. Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt will star in Five Minutes of Heaven, a drama set in Northern Ireland from the outbreak of the troubles in the 1960’s through to the Good Friday Agreement in the 1990’s.

Oliver Hirschbiegel the director of Downfalland the ill-fated Nicole Kidman – Daniel Craig starrer Invasion will helm the film.

Nesbitt starred in the Paul Greengrass directed Bloody Sunday , and if you look very, very closely you’ll see me in the crowd scenes. However, don’t hold your breath!

Source: Dark Horizons

6. Aaron Ashmore will Join Val Kilmer in the Sci-Fi horror The Thaw.

Mark A. Lewis’ film starts shooting on Monday in Canada. The film follows the fight for survival of an artic research team whose lives are threatened by a parasite which has been freed by the melting polar icecaps.

Meanwhile Kilmer and 50 Cent are planning a Christmas hit – Christmas is Calling. The pair recently co-starred in Streets of Blood a New Orleans set drama.

Source: Variety and Val Kilmer

That’s it for another week. I’ll see you at the movies!