Thursday, April 24, 2008

Today's Film News: Brian DePalma Must Be Furious


By Katey Rich

Fury201With the remake of 1980's Prom Night still doing pretty well at the box office, it's time for yet another retread of an title from the campy horror past. This time it's The Fury, Brian DePalma's 1978 follow-up to Carrie, also about a psychically gifted teen. Fox 2000 will produce the remake, reports Variety, with Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman writing the screenplay. No telling what DePalma thinks of the deal, but given that he's probably still licking his wounds from the fallout over Redacted, we shouldn't expect to hear much from him anyway.



Jody Hill is a director and writer whose first film hasn't even been released yet (The Foot Fist Way comes out this summer), but he's already attracting some big names to his next project. Ray Liotta, Anna Faris and Michael Pena have all signed on to join Seth Rogen in Observe and Report, a comedy about a mall security guard. Faris will play a mall employee with whom Rogen's security guard character flirts, Pena will be his right-hand man, and Liotta will be his nemesis in the police force. The Hollywood Reporter says the film goes into production this week.



Poster_ironman_comiconHere's the problem with writing articles speculating how the first movies of the summer will perform: you can't really get away without using the word "may" in the same sentence referring to two completely different things. Variety does it anyway, though, in their article titled "May box office may break records." See the trouble there? Basically there's a lot of giddy speculation that Iron Man, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and even Speed Racer could perform well enough to bring in huge numbers, despite none of them being as high-profile as the triumvirate of threequels that dominated May last year (the Shrek, Spider-Man and Pirates entries, if you've forgotten). Wishful thinking? Maybe, but buzz on all three top contenders is pretty good, and I'm holding out hope that Speed Racer will be more than a fast-paced whirl around a pinball machine. Stay tuned to see if this May may break box office... see, you can't avoid it!



EloiseJordana_beatty_narrowweb__300x4470And finally, nine-year-old Jordana Beatty has been chosen to play Eloise in the live-action adaptation of the beloved children's book, Eloise in Paris, to be directed by Charles Shyer (Alfie). The Reporter writes that Beatty was chosen after more than 4,000 girls auditioned. Now we're got a new face to add to the ongoing Abigail Breslin-Dakota Fanning rivalry.



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