Today's Film News: Scott Rudin Writes The Movie Future

By Katey Rich

Scott Rudin, literary adapter extraordinaire, has picked up another novel to add to his ever-growing stable of great books destined to be great movies. The No Country for Old Men producer and Miramax have secured the rights to Lush Life, the acclaimed new novel from "The Wire" writer Richard Price. Variety reports that Price will also write the script, which is a police procedural set on New York's Lower East Side. The novel debuted this week at #6 on the New York Times bestseller list.

ShoWest is over, but the news from the conference keeps trickling in. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Regal Cinemas, the largest exhibitor in the United States, will begin showing red band trailers before its R-rated and NC-17-rated films. "Red band" refers to the message before the trailer begins, which indicates that the trailer is only suitable for mature audiences; currently only "green band," or approved for all-audiences, trailers are shown. This will surely help studios like Universal and Sony, which are tasked with promoting raunchy comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express. "This is going to be hugely helpful for us when we want to give targeted moviegoers a true sense of the kind of movies we are offering," Adam Fogelson, Universal's president of marketing and distribution, told the Reporter.

50-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer will prove she's still got it in Cheri, where she'll seduce Rupert Friend (Pride & Prejudice) much to the disdain of his courtesan mother (Kathy Bates). Friend and Bates recently joined the cast, writes The Hollywood Reporter, teaming up with Dangerous Liaisons collaborators Pfeiffer, director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton. The movie is based on a 1920 French novel by the single-named Colette.

And finally, Universal is ramping up the inevitable graphic novel takeover of Hollywood. The studio has signed a deal with Dark Horse, one of the largest comic book producers outside of Marvel and DC. This gives Universal access to all Dark Horse properties, which include several titles that have already made it to the screen, Hellboy, Barb Wire and The Mask among them. The Hollywood Reporter notes that Dark Horse is already preparing several projects to take to the studio. While Dark Horse doesn't boast a stable of known superheroes like Marvel and DC, the trend in graphic novel adaptations seems to be turning away from superheroes and toward stylized action (300, Sin City, etc.). Dark Horse is also home to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novels, which series creator Joss Whedon has worked on since the show ended. Whedon's earlier effort to make a movie based on a TV show-- the 2004 blunder Serenity-- didn't work out so well, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Buffy kicking vampire butt on the big screen sometime soon.