Oliver Stone......?!

[Gold Trumpet]

I would be happy with this since Labeouf would be replacing Channing Tatum and Labeouf held his own in Wall Street 2. However, I can't take remarks on a commentary track as news just yet, but this very well could happen.

Stone, LaBeouf Considering Pinkville
The Wall Street 2 director-star combo have discussed the 'Nam drama.
December 28, 2010
by Jim Vejvoda

Director Oliver Stone revealed in his commentary track on the Blu-ray release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps that he and that film's young lead, Shia LaBeouf, have discussed reuniting for Pinkville, a Vietnam War investigative drama about the My Lai massacre of March 1968.

Stone said that he and LaBeouf discussed reteaming for Pinkville while they were making the Wall Street sequel. According to the helmer, LaBeouf is interesting in exploring the subject matter because his father was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

Pinkville was set to begin filming in Southeast Asia in December 2007, but was shelved at the 11th hour due to the then-impending Writers Guild strike. Stone had assembled a cast that included Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, Michael Pena, Woody Harrelson, Xzibit, Michael Pitt, Toby Jones, Jason Behr and Cam Gigandet.

Given his age and his dad's role in the war, it seems likely that LaBeouf would want to play Hugh Thompson, the role Tatum was initially set to play. Thompson was the U.S. Army helicopter pilot who stopped the massacre -- where G.I.s cut down as many as 500 My Lai villagers, many of them unarmed women, children and the elderly -- by placing his chopper between the soldiers and the surviving villagers.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/114/1142158p1.html

[Pas]

Hell, Wall Street 2 was pretty awesome. Sure, it had problems, but it's fair share of awesome moments.

Probs:

- moto race (wtf!!)
- Carey Mulligan had a major suckage issue
- not as informative as it should've been on investment banking.

Awesomes:

- Gordon Gecko and Josh Brolin combo
- I can't believe it but Shia
- susan sarandon's storyline

Eli Wallach ftw

[Derek]

- susan sarandon's storyline

Could have been cut completely.

[Pas]

I loved it cause I see clienta exactly (exactly 100%) like her every fucking day. Ex-teachers and nurses who flipped houses and made a killing and are now broke and crying in my office cause I can't even lend them 10k

[Gold Trumpet]

Sarandon's storyline is fine. She is a minor character with two significant scenes and she exists to give coverage to how other areas of the nearby Wall Street economy was effected. If her character played into the end by coming back in a way which pretentiously lifted up her importance (i.e. making her a bigger symbol), then it would have been a problem. However, in this story, the story arch is mainly about building up various levels of calamities between the characters to show how it effects different parts of their life. Sarandon is an extension of Shia and Wall Street's problems.

[Derek]

It's a really unnecessary subplot. We didn't need her story to see that ordinary people took a hit financially the last two or three years. There was some alright stuff in there as far as acting, inside the boardrooms, etc..but I found it overlong and spent too much time away from Gekko's character. And a girl who dates a guy just like her daddy and it's supposed to get us? Lazy. Don't get me started on the super-imposing and split screens. 

[Gold Trumpet]

Stone borrows from Eisenstein. It's about writing stories to support vertical editing and vertical plots. It's not enough that stories and characters exist for themselves. You can argue enough characterization exists for the main characters in just the scenes, but Eisenstein (late into his career) and Stone believe if you're talking about social or historical stories, you have to have characters which represent other tentacles of the social order and how the main disorder of the story is affecting those realms. Since the major hit of the Wall Street fallout was the housing market crisis, I don't think two scenes to show that is a big deal. But extending the story out allows the story to be analyzed for more contradictions within the characters and the social implications of the story. I think doing this allows a film to elude easy moral messages and make it harder for easy acceptance or criticism.

Sarandon is also a continuation of Martin Sheen's character from the first film. Bud Fox was given naivety and good background to offset his greed actions in the film. In this film, Langella represents more of a Sheen father figure who represents a good idea of business conscience, but Sarandon represents a deep greed influence for Shia to show the times have changed and the Bud Fox's of today are no longer innocent people. She is also the first measure of disconnect between Shia and Carey Mulligan. She wants to trust him since times have become tough and she keeps telling him to stand firm against Sarandon and he keeps jollying her around a little bit because she is his mother and desperate. It makes the later breakup scene more believable and not just based on one big mistake. You can start to streamline the beginning of the distrust.

[Pas]

Wow GT, nice.

[Gold Trumpet]

It's not Pinkville, but it's not a bad project to have lined up. For a lot of people's money, Don Winslow is the great untapped crime novelist. Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese have tried to adapt him before and I hear his dark comedy (Savages) about the drug trade in California and Mexico is pretty great. One of Stone's better social films was Salvador which investigates the Latin American drug world to a highly effective and comedic twist. I can't make projections about this film, but I am pretty excited it's next up for him. I'm also happy someone like Jennifer Lawrence over the next up-and-coming model/actress is lined up for a major role.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/02/oscar-nominee-jennifer-lawrence-to-star-in-oliver-stones-savages/


Oscar Nominee Jennifer Lawrence In Talks For Oliver Stone's 'Savages'
By MIKE FLEMING | Thursday February 10, 2011 @ 6:14pm EST

Oscar-nominated Winter's Bone star Jennifer Lawrence is in talks to star in Savages, the Oliver Stone-directed adaptation of the bestselling novel by Don Winslow. Shooting will begin in June.

The book is a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-style love triangle between two best friend pot growers and O, the wild child girlfriend they share.  O will be played by Lawrence, who has become widely courted for roles since  studios saw her performance as the teenager desperate to save her family home in Winter's Bone.  Somehow, sharing a bed with O created no discord in the relationship between brainy botanist Ben and Chon, a hardcore ex-Navy SEAL who returned from Afghanistan with top-quality pot and a total lack of remorse for killing to protect his pals. They live a quiet lucrative existence in Laguna Beach, growing and distributing their primo pot. Stone has been meeting with top actors to play Ben and Chon, a list that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Aaron Johnson, Tom Hardy, James Franco and Tron Legacy's Garrett Hedlund. He's also courting Benicio Del Toro for the role of an Mexican drug cartel enforcer sent to muscle Ben and Chon out of business. When they resist, O gets kidnapped and the ransom is every ill-gotten cent they've made. They hatch a complex plan to get her back and then disappear.

Several studios are chasing the CAA-repped project, which was developed privately to streamline the process. Sure enough, Savages has a shooting script by Winslow & Shane Salerno, less than a year after Stone came aboard. Since then, the book went on to become a bestseller that ended the year on many Top 10 lists, including The New York Times. It has been a breakout for Winslow, a former private detective who has been knocking on the door in Hollywood for years—his novel The Winter of Frankie Machine once had Martin Scorsese and then Michael Mann poised to direct Robert De Niro, and several of his other books had been optioned at one time or another by studios. Moritz Borman is producing with Stone. and Eric Kopeloff. Salerno is executive produc

[modage]

ATTN: Cbrad

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2011/03/13/detail/a-day-with-oliver-stone/

[MacGuffin]

Oliver Stone In Talks With Universal, Taylor Kitsch For 'Savages'
BY MIKE FLEMING; Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Savages, the Oliver Stone-directed adaptation of the Don Winslow novel, is zeroing in on a distribution deal. Universal is in poll position with two others in the running. Along with Aaron Johnson, Stone is in talks with Taylor Kitsch to play the two Laguna-based pot growers arm-twisted into working for a Mexican cartel when they kidnap O, the free spirited best friend of the growers. Kitsch, best known for Friday Night Lights and a showy small role as Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, just starred in jUniversal's Battleship after completing the title role in Disney's John Carter of Mars. The distribution situation should be resolved within the next week, but I'm hearing Universal will wind up with the picture.

Aside from Johnson and Kitsch, I've heard Stone is looking at Salma Hayek to play the cartel matriarch, an iron-fisted beauty who becomes intrigued and practically maternal over the kidnapped gal. But business is business, and the drug kingpin is suddenly plagued by a problem: someone is ripping off her drug shipments. What she doesn't know is it's the guys she's trying to muscle. Kitsch plays Chon, an iron-hard former operative who is a remorseless killer and seems to only have room in his heart for his growing partner and O. Jennifer Lawrence has fallen out of the O role because of her commitment to The Hunger Game, and Stone is looking at candidates like Olivia Wilde, as the director works on honing the script written by Shane Salerno and Winslow.

[Gold Trumpet]

From the get go, this project had the making to be fun. I've avoided the novel, but the more I read about it, the more I believe it will also be a very good movie. Stone wants a project that will put him back into the hornet's nest of Latin America corruption and when I read about the characterization boundaries of the two lead characters, I see tenets of Stone's vertical work at play. Final result? Film could be a hybrid of his early film, Salvador, with more story and style elements. The film also should get good studio backing so Stone would have a lot more filmmaking means than some of his recent films.

Benicio Del Toro Joins Oliver Stone's 'Savages'
Aaron Johnson & Taylor Kitsch Look Set To Star
Source: The Playlist

It's kind of funny how things work sometimes. Last month when Jennifer Lawrence first entered talks to star in Oliver Stone's "Savages," a handful of other names were mentioned for roles at the time including Benicio Del Toro. In subsequent reports—including the announcement of Lawrence's departure due to "The Hunger Games"—his name again seemed to be absent, but lo and behold he's the one left standing.

Deadline reports the Benicio Del Toro has signed on Oliver's Stone's thriller "Savages."  Based on Don Winslow's book, the story follows two pot growers—Ben and Chon—who square off against a Mexican drug cartel when their shared girlfriend O is kidnapped and held for ransom. Del Toro will play an enforcer for the cartel. Sweet.

Additionally, it appears the roles of Ben and Chon are locked. An offer was floated to Aaron Johnson with Taylor Kitsch also recently linked to play opposite him. Deadline reveals that the duo are now set to star, with Johnson as Ben and Kitsch as Chon. Meanwhile, Olivia Wilde is one actress of a handful vying for O, while Salma Hayek is being eyed for the part of the matriarch of the cartel.

We'll pretty much watch anything with Del Toro in it, but the material seems like some great pulpy fare and it looks like Stone is assembling a pretty killer cast. Production on "Savages" is aiming to start in June.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/benicio_del_toro_joins_oliver_stones_savages/#

[Alexandro]

I really wish he would make a serious mexican drug cartels movie, not some pulpy fantasy about two pot growers standing up to a cartel.

[Gold Trumpet]

Pulpy, yes, but from what I understand, there are dimensions to how the pot growers try to do something and what it entails. On paper, it reminds me of Salvador. That film was just suppose to be about the exploits of Richard Boyle and his manic personality, but it had other things working for it. What Savages will have working for it, I don't know, but I'm not going to be so chill about writing off the topic potential of this film at all.

It would be wonderful to see a no holds barred look at drug cartels in Mexico and I'm sure Stone would love to make that film, but in a recent interview, he listed off over a number of films he tried to make in the last 15 years and couldn't because of studios "gray listing" him. Like Wall Street 2 and bank corruption, he has to find other ways to tackle some bigger subjects these days.

[Gold Trumpet]

Sounds much better than the Epix show he announced last year which didn't take me too long to forget about. I would watch this because I am somewhat familiar with this world and what goes on. A fascinating issue, indeed.

FX Developing Conspiracy-Themed Drama Series With Oliver Stone & Virgin Produced

FX has closed a deal for a drama series project executive produced and directed by Oliver Stone. It hails from Virgin Produced, the production arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, marking the first major scripted TV sale for the fledgling company.

Adam Gibgot will write the project, which centers on a secret group known as Darkhorses who manufacture fake news stories on grand scale to service powerful clients' agendas. The project, whose research included interviewing a real Darkhorse, was developed internally at Virgin with Gibgot. Stone, well known for tackling conspiracy theories in his movies, Gibgot and Virgin pitched the drama to several cable networks before setting it up at FX in what the producers said was a competitive situation with Showtime. Fox TV Studios will produce. Stone is slated to direct the potential pilot and executive produce the series, which was packaged by CAA. Last year, he signed a development deal with Epix to turn Bruce Wagner's novel Still Holding into a drama series.

Virgin Produced, which recently released its first movie Limitless on the feature side, has been ramping up its TV production operations. Its scripted TV development is overseen by head of scripted television Michael Forman. On the unscripted side, the company recently inked a a first-look deal with E!

http://www.deadline.com/2011/03/fx-developing-drama-series-with-oliver-stone-and-virgin/