Why, God, why?!? - Films That Should Not Get The Greenlight

[mogwai]

updated beaver shots!

aaah spoiler!

[The Sheriff]

why does that spoil it for you?

oh...

[MacGuffin]

Screen Gems to reheat 'Big Chill'
Film to be remade with African-American cast
Source: Variety

Screen Gems will remake Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 pic "The Big Chill."

The movie will likely be retitled, but the original script by Kasdan and Barbara Benedek will be used as a template; the storyline will be contemporized and the cast will be African American.

Screen Gems owns the rights and will hire a screenwriter to do a polish on the original script. Kasdan is not involved.

Regina King will be part of the ensemble, and she will produce with her sister, Reina King, and Will Packer ("Stomp the Yard").

Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper is out to directors and intends to get the picture in production by year's end.

The remake will stick closely to the original storyline, in which seven college friends reunite over a weekend at a South Carolina house for the funeral of a pal. As they get reacquainted, they become introspective about how their lives turned out.

The cast of the new film will be in their 30s, which means the characters will have matriculated together in the 1990s instead of the '60s. Music will be a big part of the film, though the redo may stick with the original's fixation on Motown classics.

[MacGuffin]

No. No, no, NO! 


Back up the Ladder
Source: Moviehole

A remake of the cult classic – code for 'didn't do well theatrically, but made a mint on video' – "Jacobs Ladder" is in the works, according to Variety.

Alison Rosenzweig, producer of the upcoming thriller "Transit," about a family road trip gone horribly awry, has apparently set the wheels in motion on a the Tim Robbins redo.

Directed by Adrian Lyne, the 1990 film told of a traumatized Vietnam War veteran (Robbins) who finds out that his post-war life isn't what he believes it to be when he's attacked by horned creatures in the subway and his dead son comes to visit him.

[The Sheriff]

"Jacobs Ladder"

ah man, updated wood!

[MacGuffin]

Now, I'm getting really angry   :

Brad Pitt's Bullitt
Source: Monsters and Critics

Brad Pitt will star in a remake of 60s classic movie 'Bullitt'.

The 'Ocean's Thirteen' actor will take the role of Lt Frank Bullitt made famous by Hollywood legend Steve McQueen in the 1968 original film.

A source said: "Brad shares a lot of the same passions as Steve McQueen - including a love of motorbikes and fast cars - so it was a dream role for him."

The original film sees the tough detective hunting a hitman who has killed his fellow officers. The movie is renowned for featuring one of the best car chases in cinema history as McQueen's Mustang car speeds through the rollercoaster streets of San Francisco.

Brad, 43, has been linked with the role since 2003 but the project has only now been given the green light as film bosses desperately try to kick-start as many movies as possible before the Screen Actors Guild begin their anticipated strike action.

Brad can next be seen playing legendary outlaw Jesse James in the western 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford', due out in October.

[MacGuffin]

Okay, is it fuck with Mac's favorite films week or what? 


Zak Penn signs with CAA
Filmmaker is writing remake of 'Dirty Dozen'
Source: Variety

Writer-director Zak Penn has inked with CAA.

Penn, who had been repped by Endeavor, is rewriting a remake of "The Dirty Dozen" for Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver, and his screen credits include "X-Men: The Last Stand," "Fantastic Four" and "Elektra."

He also wrote, produced and directed "The Grand," which is being distributed by Anchor Bay, and made his directing debut on the 2004 pic "Incident at Loch Ness."

Penn's production company, Reol Inc., has a first look deal at 20th Century Fox.

[B.C. Long]

A source said: "Brad shares a lot of the same passions as Steve McQueen - including a love of motorbikes and fast cars - so it was a dream role for him."

The source continued : "Brad is also human, male, and has been in movies with people in them. It makes him perfect for the Steve McQueen role!"

[MacGuffin]

'Casablanca' to be remade on Indian shores
Source: Reuters

NEW DELHI -- An Indian filmmaker is remaking "Casablanca", swapping the Rick's Cafe of the Oscar-winning classic for a restaurant in south India, and the World War II backdrop for the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

In the 1942 film, Humphrey Bogart played a club owner who romances a married Ingrid Bergman and helps her escape the Nazis with her husband, a resistance leader.

"My film will be a tribute to the original," said Rajeev Nath, the director who plans to premiere his Malayalam language remake, "Ezham Mudra" (The Seventh Seal), in the coastal Moroccan city where the original was set. "As a student of films, I had watched this great classic 20 times."

Nath's protagonist is an Indian diplomat-turned restaurateur who helps his lover and her husband, both Tamil separatist rebels fighting the Sri Lankan government, escape from India.

In the adaptation, the hero and his lover meet in a beachside restaurant.

Nath says his film will swap the World War II background of the original for the separatist movement in Sri Lanka -- where Tamils have been fighting for a separate ethnic homeland in the north and east of the Indian Ocean island -- but does not indulge in any politics.

"It is neither against nor in support of their cause," said the 55-year-old director, who met some Tamil Tiger rebels during a trip to Norway.

The Sri Lankan civil war has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983, about 4,500 of them since last year alone.

The war strikes a strong chord across the Palk Strait in southern India where more than 60 million Indian Tamils live. India has had a complex political and military link to the conflict and Tamil rebels have also taken refuge here.

Nath begins shooting next month and some parts are to be filmed in Sri Lanka. The film is slated for a 2008 release.

"Ezham Mudra," which is Nath's 12th project as director, features Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi and Bollywood actress Mandira Bedi in the roles famously essayed by Bogart and Bergman.

Nath, who won India's prestigious national award for direction in 1999 for his Malayalam film "Janani" (Mother), said remaking "Casablanca" was a dream come true.

"Casablanca" ranked third after "Citizen Kane" and "The Godfather" on a list of 100 best American films in a poll conducted by the American Film Institute in 2007.

[MacGuffin]

Keanu Reeves lands on 'Earth'
Actor to star in classic sci-fi remake
Source: Variety

Twentieth Century Fox has set Keanu Reeves to star in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," its re-imagining of the 1951 Robert Wise-directed sci-fi classic.

Reeves committed over the weekend to play Klaatu, a humanoid alien who arrives on Earth accompanied by an indestructible, heavily armed robot and a warning to world leaders that their continued aggression will lead to annihilation by species watching from afar.

Erwin Stoff is producing, with Scott Derrickson ("The Exorcism of Emily Rose") directing from a script by David Scarpa. Reeves' commitment puts the picture on track for a late fall or early 2008 production start. Studio sees it as a tentpole.

The Klaatu role was originated by Michael Rennie. The 1951 film's premise, a response to the rise of the Cold War after WWII, is being updated, and the film will use advances in visual effects.

It also returns "The Matrix" star to his strong suit in the sci-fi realm and puts him in back-to-back films for Fox. He just completed the David Ayer-directed "The Night Watchman," for Fox Searchlight/Regency about police corruption based on a story by James Ellroy. Forest Whitaker, Chris Evans and Hugh Laurie also star.

[davidchili]

Penn, who had been repped by Endeavor, is rewriting a remake of "The Dirty Dozen" for Warner Bros...

He also wrote, produced and directed "The Grand," which is being distributed by Anchor Bay, and made his directing debut on the 2004 pic "Incident at Loch Ness."

I have no idea where this is going, I enjoyed that mockumentary "Incident at Loch Ness"(starring Werner Herzog) a lot, I can't imagine how "The Dirty Dozen" would end up being through his hands.

[MacGuffin]

Woo's 'Killer' gets a new contract
Lee to remake Woo's gangster classic in L.A.
Source: Hollywood Reporter

BUSAN, South Korea -- Legendary action director John Woo's 1989 Hong Kong classic "The Killer" will be remade in Los Angeles with a Korean star replacing Chow Yun-fat as the hard-boiled hit man.

Director John H. Lee, a Korean-American and a CAA client, will move the action through L.A.'s Koreatown, Chinatown and South Central, said Woo's longtime producer and partner at Lion Rock Prods., Terence Chang.

"The actor has to be Korean in this version, but also, L.A. is a character in the film," Chang said in an interview on the opening day of the four-day Asian Film Market.

"In John's original version, it doesn't really matter where the film is set, except that Hong Kong has this dragon boat festival which adds a bit of local flavor. In this remake, we will use the geography of L.A. to move the story forward."

Director Lee told The Hollywood Reporter that he's excited about working on the remake of one of his "favorite films of all time."

"I ask myself why they chose me and whether I can top it," Lee said from Seoul on Monday. "But then I realize it's not about making it better. It's about making my own version. My strength is dealing with human emotions, austerity and elegance."

Chung Taewon, president of Korea's Taewon Entertainment, said that his company was also involved in the project.

Taewon Entertainment is majority owned by Fireworks International, a Hong Kong-based media company, initially funded by Dutch Bank ABN Amro.

Chang said a script is being worked on but said it is too early to reveal other details.

Lee, also at Pusan, directed "A Moment to Remember" in 2004, the most popular Korean movie ever to open in Japan, where it earned about $26 million.

The remake of "The Killer" will be the latest in a string of Asian films to cross the Pacific to Hollywood, where last year Martin Scorsese won the best director Oscar for "The Departed," a remake of Hong Kong gangster film "Infernal Affairs."

[Stefen]

DDL can play Korean.

Ugh, I don't even wanna THINK about how he prepares for that role.

[Pubrick]

Ugh, I don't even wanna THINK about how he prepares for that role.

hahah, another reason why samsong may have been ostracized.

[MacGuffin]

Naomi Watts set for 'Birds' remake
Martin Campbell in talks to direct for Universal
Source: Variety

Naomi Watts will star and Martin Campbell is in negotiations to direct Universal's new version of "The Birds."

U is planning a reimagining of Daphne du Maurier's short story, which inspired the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic.

Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller will produce through their Platinum Dunes shingle, while Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman are producing for Mandalay Pictures.

U is not looking to rush the pic into production prior to a possible strike.

Stiles White and Juliet Snowden wrote a version of the script that is still being developed. New scribes may be brought aboard.

For the moment, Campbell's and Watts' dance cards are already filled with other projects.

Campbell is attached to Fox's runaway train actioner "Unstoppable" and crime thriller "36" at Paramount. He most recently helmed the latest James Bond installment "Casino Royale."

Watts, who will next be seen in Warner Independent's "Funny Games," is filming "The International" and will follow that up with First Look's adaptation of Amy Sutherland's "Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premiere School for Exotic Animal Trainers."

Mandalay's David Zelon and Jonathan Krauss will oversee for Mandalay. Scott Bernstein is overseeing the pic for U.