Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: April 13, 2008

I quite enjoy this little column. It’s now my Sunday afternoon ritual to sit down with a cup of coffee and surf the net to research the Weekend Movie News Wrap Up.

At Screen Rant we love movies, and we know that you love movies too… so this is our little gift to you – the news that you might have missed during the week.

This week we feature news on:

Colin Farrell in Triage, Austin Powers 4, Dario Argento’s Giallo, Natalie Portman in Wuthering Heights, Sc-Fi film Battle: Los Angeles and Vin Diesel’s Babylon AD.

To find out more, read on.

1. Fellow countryman Colin Farrell will star with Paz Vega and Christopher Lee in Triage. According to Variety:

“(The film is a) dark tale of a photojournalist who returns home following a dangerous assignment without his colleague and best friend.”

It’s not much to go on, but with Farrell and Lee on board- I’m interested. The film directed by Danis Tanovic will lens in Ireland and Spain.

2. The word on the street is that supermodel and spell check nightmare Gisele Bundchen is in talks for a role in Austin Powers 4.

I really enjoyed Goldmember, but is there still an audience for Powers? Maybe. Apparently she will meet soon with Mike Myers and director Jay Roach.

3. Adrien Brody will star in Dario Argento’s Giallo. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

“Giallo revolves around an American flight attendant who teams with an Italian investigator to search for her missing sister who has been abducted by a serial killer known only as Yellow.”

Vincent Gallo was originally set to star in this film, but dropped out – probably because he is an over-opinionated, self-obsessed plonker. Well, that’s my opinion anyway.

BTW, Giallo means yellow in Italian.

4. Natalie Portman will star as Catherine Earnshaw in a new adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The film which will be directed by The Jacket director John Maybury tells the tragic love story between Catherine and the brooding Heathcliff.

Well, that’ll make my dad happy: he’s a big fan of Wuthering Heights.

5. Columbia Pictures has bought the spec script Battle: Los Angeles. This cool sounding film is about a platoon of Marines battling an alien invasion on the streets of the City of Angels.

Sounds crazy, Sounds fun. It also sounds very, very expensive. Time will tell- if it ever sees the lens of a camera. That said producer Neil Moritz said :

“We are going to be in production within six months. What’s attractive to me is that it’s a huge event movie that can be done at a modest scale.”

Hmm….

6. There was once a time when Vin Diesel was seen as the next big thing. Then he made The Chronicles of Riddick. His latest flick Babylon AD has had a troubled production and word is out that Mathieu Kassovitz’s film will have two different versions- one for the US and one for Europe… I presume other countries will have another (just kidding).

It was first reported that the European cut would be a butt-numbing 160 minutes and that the US version would be only 90 mins. When the film’s producers got wind of this they published a statement on Myspace refuting the story stating that the rumors started because Kassovitz made a joke to journalists on set.
It is now believed that the European cut was never that long and will be only 105 minutes long.

The film seems to have been in production for years, I’m sure that all these rumors aren’t a good sign.

That’s it for the Weekend Movie News Wrap Up this week.

See you at the movies!

Sources: Variety , The Boston Globe , The Hollywood Reporter , Babylon AD Myspace , Twitchfilm