With Cannes all said and done, announcements of new projects in the works have been fewer and farther between, but here’s a batch from the past week or so definitely worth noting.
“Rachel Weisz is in negotiations to join Robert Pattinson and Robert De Niro for Olivier Assayas’s sprawling Chicago-set gangster drama Idol’s Eye, which is due to start shooting in the fall,” reports Elsa Keslassy for Variety. “Previously titled Hubris, the project is based on a 2007 Playboy article called ‘Boosting the Big Tuna’ by Hillel Levin. It follows a group of thieves who rob a man who turns out to be Chicago mafia boss Tony Accardo.”
“Oliver Stone is set to whip up fresh controversy with his adaptation of The Snowden Files, an account of the ongoing NSA scandal written by the Guardian journalist Luke Harding,” reports the Guardian‘s own Xan Brooks.
The Boston Globe‘s Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein report that Woody Allen will start shooting his next project, featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, in Rhode Island in July, adding that “the movie is described as a ‘contemporary story’ with academics, graduate students, and middle- and working-class folks.”
“The omnibus Petersburg: A Category of Feelings is being put together and a roster of directors, including Todd Solondz, Ralph Fiennes, Sam Rockwell, Timur Bekmambetov, Avdotya Smirnova, Bakur Bakuradze, Cedric Klapisch, Igor Voloshin and Ilmar Raag,” reports the Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth. “And in case you’re wondering, this is a different project than the Saint Petersburg, I Love You film that was announced a while back.”
Roger Friedman is reporting at Showbiz411 that Quentin Tarantino is planning to shoot his new western, The Hateful Eight, in November in Wyoming. You may remember that QT had abandoned the project when the screenplay leaked and Gawker posted it. But then he staged a live reading and it seems that that cast, which includes Samuel L Jackson, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Walt Goggins and Zoe Bell, may well remain intact.
Having served his time, John McTiernan is set to direct his first film in over a decade, notes Leonard Pearce at the Film Stage. Red Squad, “which follows a former DEA agent and his band of mercenaries who aim to take down a drug kingpin in a Mexican border town,” will likely star Nicolas Cage.
Alejandro González Iñárritu will direct Leonard DiCaprio and Tom Hardy in The Revenant, reports Jordan Raup, also at the Film Stage. “[I]t’s an adaptation of Michael Punke’s 19th century-set western novel, in which DiCaprio will play the lead character of Hugh Glass, an injured fur trapper who’s robbed by two men after he can’t be brought back to civilization; after being left for dead, he escapes the wilderness and goes to find revenge.”
“The Adjustment Bureau director George Nolfi has come on board to helm Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon,” reports Variety‘s Dave McNary. Also: Johnny Depp is in early talks to take the lead in The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero.
Björn Runge will direct Glenn Close in an adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s bestselling novel The Wife, reports Jorn Rossing Jensen at Cineuropa.
Trailer for Scott Frank’s A Walk Among the Tombstones with Liam Neeson
Meantime, Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow have shifted the release of Andy and Lana Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending from July to February 6, 2015. Deadline‘s Jen Yamato hears that “the Wachowskis needed more time to complete visual effects work on their CG-heavy space epic, which spans intergalactic worlds and follows the story of a woman [Mila Kunis] who links up with a space warrior [Channing Tatum] and learns she’s the heir to Earth.”
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