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Stuff You Need to Know, Sunday, September 7, 2008

  • Rebecca is a musical. Yes, the Daphne du Maurier novel. It hits Broadway in 2010. It launched in Vienna in 2006 and is making its way around the world a bit before arriving in New York. The video below is with the original German version–so you can at least check out the music. Unless you know German, then you’re just ahead of the rest of us, naturally.

    Direct link for the feedreaders.

  • The Company Men stars Steve Buscemi, Martin Landau, Ron Livingston and Steve Zahn and is about a toy company trying to survive. Production starts in Novemeber. Actually, it’s a drama. Source: Hollywood Reporter.
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  • Harry Brown will star Michael Caine as an ex-military widower whose friend is killed and he decides to step up and deliver beatdowns to those responsible. Is there anything about this notion that last sentence that doesn’t sound like a winner? Of course not. Emily Mortimer is on board to play a cop. Source: Hollywood Reporter.
  • James Franco will star in Howl, the Allen Ginsberg biopic. Source: Variety.
  • Did anybody foresee Inside Man becoming a franchise? I didn’t, but the damn thing made $175M worldwide, and anything’s a franchise if there’s money involved. Spike Lee will return to helm the sequel and Terry George (co-writer on Hotel Rwanda) is in talk to scribe. Also to return are Denzel‘s and Clive Owen‘s characters and mayhap the actors themselves, according to Lee, who says they’re both interested. Source: Hollywood Reporter.
  • Leaves of Grass is a comedy-thriller written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson. The cast is Ed Norton, Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. Keri Russell is in talks. “Norton is portraying twin brothers, one an Ivy League philosophy professor, the other a small-time and brilliant marijuana grower. The professor is lured back to his Oklahoma hometown for a doomed scheme against a local drug lord (Dreyfuss) that unravels his life. Sarandon plays the brothers’ eccentric mother, while Russell will play a love interest.” Source: Hollywood Reporter.
  • The Monster of Florence, the true-crime book written by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi about a serial killer in Florence (Italy, not Alabama–the Alabama one will be the inevitable parody film) has had its film rights nabbed by Tom Cruise and UA. Cruise is on board to produce and might star depending on how the script looks. The script is going to be handled by Christopher McQuarrie, who most recently co-wrote Valkyrie starring Cruise. This from the authors of the book, reported by Variety. The article also says “The ‘Monster of Florence’ case had previously inspired the Thomas Harris sequel Hannibal.” Hannibal, of course, is the book that Thomas Harris owes me a refund for, along with several hours of my life back.
  • West Beverly High is putting on a 90210 stage musical. Word has it the entire area is under quarantine lest this idea spread. Source: Variety.
  • Spider-Man 4 and 5 are about to get a star and helmer locked down–Hollywood Reporter tells us that Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi are both about to get their deals wrapped up. Sony wants to start production on both films, shot at the same time, in the fall of next year with the fourth film hitting cinemas in May of 2011. Jamie Vanderbilt (Zodiac) is scribing. No deal yet for Kirsten Dunst. In the same article, they finally mention the scribes they said they were going to get for the Venom movie, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, who also scribed Zombieland, which we had mentioned previously. Anyone excited? Me neither.
  • Both To Be Or Not to Be and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are coming to Broadway as straight plays. Now these are straight plays, but I’d like to serve up an idea that would actually work on stage: Streets of Fire: The Musical. Don’t look at me like that. I am fucking serious. Source: Variety.
  • 1 comment

    • Plot for Spider Man 4: Scientist/Bystander will undergo traumatic event which coincidentally bestows superpowers, will attempt to destroy world/Spider Man, kidnap MJ, then rip Spidey’s mask half-way and be vanquished in a not-overly-violent way.

      Seriously, I lost all respect when they doubled Venom and Sandman and got them BOTH wrong. I wonder what baddie they’ll be grabbing next. Fingers crossed for Carnage, but that won’t happen until 5, if ever.