‘Ride Along’ to pull up ahead of ‘Jack Ryan’

Buddy cop comedy Ride Along, starring Ice Cube and comedian Kevin Hart, whose documentary Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain was one of the most successful docs of 2013, is poised to cut in front of the other guys and finish first this weekend. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit will likely be Ride’s fiercest competitor, although the spy reboot isn’t expected to put up much of a fight.

Ride Along follows a seasoned cop who tries to scare away his sister’s boyfriend by taking the wannabe policeman on a faux ride-along – which soon turns very and hilariously real. Pundits believe the film’s dual plots involving a romantic relationship and a budding bromance should appeal to audiences of both genders and help the film score big at the box-office. Expectations are hovering about $30 million for the long weekend. Interestingly, if Ride Along does earn the most money, this will be the third consecutive year a Universal film has come out on top over the MLK holiday.

Chris Pine is now the fourth actor to tackle the popular Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan. Alec Baldwin played him once and Harrison Ford played him twice in the ‘90s, while Ben Affleck made the most recent attempt to establish a Jack Ryan franchise with 2002’s The Sum of All Fears. Is Chris Pine finally the guy to make a Bourne-like success of Ryan? Unclear. The film has gotten mixed though not terrible reviews, with many critics adopting an ambivalent attitude: Competent enough, but we’ve seen it before. Shadow Recruit opens in 3,387 theatres to Ride Along’s 2,662, but even with a potentially larger audience base, the movie is only expected to gross somewhere in the high-teens.

2013 saw a number of high returns for horror films, and Devil’s Due may be looking to continue that momentum. Unfortunately, the movie’s found-footage conceit, once a popular device, seems to be wearing thin with viewers. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones also featured spooky video and yet it failed to match the figures of past Paranormal Activity movies, opening to just $18 million, a new franchise low. Devil’s Due doesn’t have a similarly recognizable name, or cast (although fans of TV show “Friday Night Lights” will be excited to see Matt Saracen up on the big screen), in which case, the film will likely clock in between $10 and $15 million.

Animated kids’ comedy The Nut Job is the last new release opening wide this weekend. Comparisons to Disney’s winter behemoth Frozen are inevitable, although the latter continues to hold remarkably strong. The nutty squirrel caper may have novelty on its side, but Frozen has the enduring appeal of Idina Menzel. The princess musical will likely out-earn Job, which isn’t expected to gross more than $20 million or so.

Lastly, several Academy Award nominees are getting their pre-Oscars re-release this weekend, to the delight of those intent on seeing each of the nine Best Picture contenders before the March 2 telecast. Technically, Captain Phillips is already two days into its theatrical return, having opened in 903 theatres on Wednesday. Favorites Gravity and 12 Years a Slave will screen in 944 and 761 locations, respectively.

Rosamund Pike joins Ben Affleck in 'Gone Girl'

The wait is over. Two weeks after announcing that Ben Affleck would play the male lead in Gone Girl, casting for the female lead was announced. Rosamund Pike, who has been seen with Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, as well as the upcoming feature The World's End and the 2009 indie An Education, has won the coveted part. The juicy role requires the character to make quite a transformation--but I won't
go any further. In the book, the story is first told through the perspective of the husband (Affleck), then moves to the perspective of the wife (Pike). Her character goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary, and her husband becomes the number-one suspect. They each see each other through completely different lenses, which hopefully these talented actors will be able to convey.

Now that the casting is in place, production is set to start in September. Author Gillian Flynn, a former TV writer for Entertainment Weekly, adapted the screenplay of her novel, which was her third published thriller. What promises to set this adaptation apart, however, is having David Fincher as a director. His 2007 crime thriller Zodiac remains one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, and there will be plenty of opportunities for him to apply those touches in Gone Girl. My one concern when it comes to the box office is that the book hinges on its twist ending--and for the millions who have read the book, that twist is forever spoiled. Fincher's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, another literary adaptation, underperformed despite being impeccably made. That movie, however, had a double death-knell. Not only had many people already read the trilogy, spoiling part of the mystery, they were so excited to see a movie of the books, they had already gone out and seen the entire trilogy of the Swedish-language adaptation, which had a dramatically successful run at the U.S. box office. At least in this case, Fincher will be the first to adapt the work. If this is anything like Zodiac, or its cousins Se7en and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, audiences will be in for a treat.

Ben Affleck may play the husband in 'Gone Girl'

I love good casting. After reading Gillian Flynn's bestseller and page-turner Gone Girl, I know that Ben Affleck would be great in the part as the husband, a role THR reported today the actor is seriously considering. The question now is who will play the second lead, the wife. Reese

Witherspoon is producing the adaptation, and sadly she's not playing the lead, which is too bad, because she's perfect for the role. Maybe after her run-in with the law earlier this year, the part of a good girl who has a dark side felt too close to home.

But back to Affleck. Without giving too much away, he plays a man whose wife goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary. He's a guy with some flaws (he may be seeing someone on the side), and the suspicions of the police quickly turn to him. But as he tries to solve the puzzle of his missing wife, some details turn up that start to put her under suspicion. Both characters have to play good and bad, which requires some excellent acting chops--and casting.

Affleck generally plays the good guy. Even when he's a criminal, like in The Town, he's a likeable character. Apparently, the stars in the running to play the wife include Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, and Natalie Portman--who have also generally played good-natured heroines, Theron and her Monster and Young Adult roles excepting. If the casting director were to choose two stars equally known for playing nice characters, it would play nicely off the dilemma in the thriller itself--if both stars are usually good, the audience may wonder,  which one is actually bad?

David Fincher has signed on to direct the adaptation, which Flynn herself adapted. Affleck would appear in Gone Girl before he directs his next feature, Live By Night, so it seems like the 20th Century Fox production may be planned for a 2014 release.

Telluride Film Festival brings early reviews of 'Argo,' 'Hyde Park on Hudson'

Known as the festival for film lovers, the small Telluride Film
Festival, which took place over Labor Day weekend, included screenings
of Argo and Hyde Park of Hudson, two high-profile movies set to release later this year. Hyde Park is clearly Oscar bait, while Argo has been flying under the radar. Expectations appear to have helped Argo (they were low to begin with) and hurt Hyde Park on Hudson. Here are some of the critical responses coming out of the festival.

Argo: On its way up. Sure, Ben Affleck won a screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting, but he's done mostly mainstream commercial work as an
actor since then. But he also won
praise as a director with 2010's The Town and has an acting role in
Terrence Malick's To the Wonder. His
third directing effort, Argo,
a fact-based thriller about the Iran hostage crisis, should do well at
the box office when it opens wide on October 12. However, it's now also
being talked about as a serious Oscar contender.  A surprise pick at
Telluride, Anne Thompson of Indiewire declares that "multiple Oscar nominations are in order as this movie surges to the top of the current Oscar contenders list." THR lauds the "crackerjack political thriller," and praises the "confidence and finesse" of Affleck's directing.

Holding position: Hyde Park on Hudson. A personal story of a historical figure, FDR, Hyde Park on Hudson appears to be taking a note from The King's Speech,
2010's success story. However, early notices indicate it doesn't rise
to
the heights of the Oscar winner. Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere
was rather dismissive of the "well-finessed historical parlor piece." Eric Kohn of Indiewire manages expectations,
deciding that the historical pic has "enough momentum to keep its lead
actors (including Laura Linney as the president's temporary love
interest) in the awards race." From a commerical perspective, THR pegs it
as a "refined treat that nonetheless will appeal to a wide audience." 
Maybe the Focus release, which opens on December 7, will be more like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a box-office hit that will likely be recognized at the Oscars, but not overwhelmingly. Surely Hyde Park on Hudson
will gather more nominations than that movie, but the FDR-centered love
story may be too reminiscent of its more successful predecessor, The King's Speech, to come close to the 2010 film's success.

 

 

 

 

Trailer for 'Argo' promises a smart, action-filled spy thriller

File Argo under "so crazy, it has to be real." The trailer for the audacious spy picture just released, and it looks like star/director Ben Affleck will be able to top what he did in The Town.

Set in 1979, Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a CIA employee whose division specializes in doctoring fake identities, credentials, and all sorts of creative wizardry. When Iranian revolutionaries took embassy employees hostage that November, six managed to escape, eventually hiding out in the Canadian embassy. Mendez came up with a crazy idea--have the six people pass as members of a film crew scouting a project. An actual sci-fi script, titled Argo, was found, a production office set up, and ads announcing production were placed in The Hollywood Reporter. The ruse worked, and the recently declassified story became the subject of a thrilling 2007 "Wired" story, "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran."

Compared to what actually happened, it appears that Argo raises the stakes. "Wired" describes the passengers calmly boarding the plane without detection. The trailer shows soldiers running through the airport in hot pursuit, and vehicles chasing after a plane as it lifts off the runway. Talk about giving away the ending.

Argo comes off as a real-life Ocean's Eleven or Catch Me If You Can. It's also reminiscent of previous projects from producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, who favor wacky situations involving politics, spies, and the Middle East (epitomized by The Men Who Stare at Goats).

The trailer emphasizes the larger-than-life personalities of Hollywood producers, but there's a lot of material from the "Wired" article that's just as entertaining. Iranian government officials (successfully) hired carpet weavers to reassemble shredded documents from the embassy. Mendez's group, the Office of Technical Service, succeeded by pulling off tricks like putting microphones on cats. He also had contacts in Hollywood--most likely to help with unusual makeup or forgery--that helped him come up with the idea in the first place.

The Warner Bros. project looks like first-rate entertainment, full of American ingenuity and scored to Aerosmith's "Dream On." It seems like the perfect popcorn movie, but viewers will have to wait for this one until October 12.

TV stars flock to the big screen

By Sarah Sluis

Where better to draw supporting cast members from than some of the hottest televisions shows? Christina Hendricks, known as the voluptuous head secretary Joan Holloway in AMC's "Mad Men," signed on to Life as We Know It, a romance-drama that will start filming this fall. Katherine Heigl (who herself rose to fame through "Grey's Anatomy") will star with Josh Duhamel. The movie follows a romance that develops between Heigl and Duhamel when they are named caregivers of their friends' children when the couple dies in a car accident. Because Hendricks is playing the mutual best friend of Heigl and Duhamel, chances are she'll be playing the dead wife, which means we'll mainly be seeing her before or in flashbacks.

Blake Lively from "Gossip Girl" is joining actor/director Ben Affleck's production The Town. The crime thriller, an adaptation of the novel Prince of Thieves, will center on Affleck but has assembled a big supporting cast, including another actor from "Mad Men," Jon Hamm, a.k.a. Don Draper. Lively will play Affleck's ex-girlfriend, who is also the sister of a member of his gang (Jeremy Renner). The production also starts filming this fall, so both of these projects should appear on the silver screen sometime in 2010.

I remember seeing Blake Lively in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and thinking, this girl is jumping off the screen. Within the ensemble cast, which included already established stars like Alexis Bledel ("Gilmore Girls") and America Ferrera (Real Women Have Curves), she stood out with effortless charisma. There was no doubt in my mind she was going to be cast in some big project. She made a few lackluster films, and has since achieved fame as the star of "Gossip Girls." I'm pleased that she has been cast in this role, as I suspect she has some deeper acting talent that's just waiting for the right role. Likewise, Christina Hendricks has worked almost exclusively--and regularly--in television for the past decade, including roles in niche favorites like "Firefly" and "Undressed." While both of these women are A-listers in (my) television world, these supporting roles could lead to a starring project that I'd happily buy a ticket to.