It’s been a full week since the last catchall news roundup, so here’s a quick update focusing only on some of the more interesting projects that’ve been announced since.
“Iggy Pop and Dario Argento are using the crowdfunding site Indiegogo seeking donations for a new horror film in which the punk icon will star as the classic bogey man ‘The Sandman,'” reports the Guardian‘s Ben Child. “Titled E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman, the film is based on the 1816 short story… rather than the Neil Gaiman graphic novel, which is currently being adapted for the big screen with Joseph Gordon Levitt tipped to direct. The titular villain is a version of the bogey man who gouges out the eyes of his victims when they refuse to go to sleep.”
And the Guardian‘s Catherine Shoard: “Lena Dunham is to adapt Karen Cushman’s 1994 children’s book Catherine, Called Birdy, for the big screen. Speaking at the New Yorker festival in New York, Dunham revealed that she was currently working on a screenplay of the novel, which is set in 1290 England.”
“Sixteen Films unveiled details of an ambitious interactive biography titled The Flickering Flame, exploring the career of director Ken Loach,” reports Melanie Goodfellow for Screen. “‘At the project’s center will be an interview-led documentary which explores the different battles that not only inspired Ken’s films but have also arisen in the process of getting them made,’ said producer Rebecca O’Brien.”
Bertrand Tavernier “is currently producing and directing an ambitious documentary that will explore French cinema from the 1930s through to the early 1970s,” reports Martin Dale for Variety. “The project is inspired by Martin Scorsese’s Personal Journey through American Movies (1995) and My Voyage to Italian Cinema (1999). It will be highly personal—exploring the French films that inspired Tavernier to start out as a director—while showcasing long lost films that he has discovered during the production process.”
For Les Inrocks, Mathieu Dejean reports that Bruno Dumont is considering a second season of Li’l Quinquin and that the Franco-German broadcaster Arte hopes to make it happen.
Scarlett Johansson is set to star in and executive produce an eight-episode adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel The Custom of the Country, reports Deadline‘s Nellie Andreeva.
“Sean Durkin, the filmmaker behind Martha Marcy May Marlene, is now tackling a different sort of family drama and is in negotiations to direct Sony’s adaptation of Little House on the Prairie.” Borys Kit has more in the Hollywood Reporter.
“Paul Feig is working on an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters for Sony Pictures, but that doesn’t mean the new film won’t include Bill Murray,” suggests Ramin Setoodeh, who spoke with Murray for his current Variety cover story. “Murray left the door open–by a hair–indicating that he’d consider another Ghostbusters if the idea felt fresh. Feig and Katie Dippold (The Heat) are now working on the new script.” Following this week’s release of St. Vincent, Murray will be appearing in “a new Cameron Crowe film (out in May 2015) and the Barry Levinson comedy Rock the Kasbah.” Meantime, as Andrew Pulver reports in the Guardian, “Murray is to reunite with his Lost in Translation director Sofia Coppola for a carol-singing Christmas TV special.”
“Jennifer Jason Leigh has been cast as the female lead in Quentin Tarantino’s post-Civil War western The Hateful Eight,” joining Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. Rebecca Ford has details in the Hollywood Reporter.
“Sam Raimi is in talks to direct Love May Fail, a novel by Silver Linings Playbook author Matthew Quick that Mike White has adapted,” reports Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr.
“Stephen Sondheim is at work on a new musical with the playwright David Ives (Venus in Fur) based on two renowned films by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” reports Patrick Healy for the New York Times. “The Public Theater and the film and theater producer Scott Rudin are producing the work; the Public’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said on Saturday that the Public planned to mount the show at some point in the future.”
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