The wave rolls on. Following last week‘s and this Monday‘s roundups of announcements of projects in the works, it’s already time for another. We begin with the Hollywood Reporter‘s Tatiana Siegel: “Francis Ford Coppola is returning to the Italian-American experience for his next directing effort. The Godfather helmer is readying an untitled film that will chronicle an Italian-American family and span from the 1930s to the 1960s.”
“Todd Haynes is newly attached to direct Number 9’s drama Carol, set to star Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska,” reports Screen‘s Andreas Wiseman. “Carol is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novella, The Price of Salt, which follows a relationship between two women in 1950s New York: a girl in her twenties, played by Wasikowska, who works in a department store but dreams of a more fulfilling life and a wife trapped in a loveless, moneyed marriage.”
“Olivier Assayas has landed his first U.S. production,” reports Ben Travers for Indiewire. “Based on a true story, Hubris focuses on a group of thieves who rob what they think is a pawn shop, only to then discover they’ve stolen from a notorious Chicago crime lord.”
Monte Hellman will shoot Love or Die in Lisbon next winter, reports Geoffrey Macnab for Screen. “It tells the story of a man and woman who fail to meet during their lifetime but are sent back to earth to fulfill their love.” On that same page is news that Mathieu Amalric will direct Léa Drucker, his co-writer Stephanie Cleau, and himself in The Blue Room: “The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by George Simenon about a couple who meet secretly to make love in the blue room at the Hotel des Voyageurs. They exchange what they think are innocent words after sex but their encounter has very bloody consequences.”
“Ladies and gents, it looks like we may get that Dazed and Confused spiritual sequel after all!” exclaims Erik Davis at Movies.com (and FWIW, I’m probably as excited as he is). “We’ve been itching for another ensemble comedy from Richard Linklater ever since Dazed and Confused became required viewing in our house at least 47 times each year, and we couldn’t have been more ecstatic when word spread that Linklater wanted to make That’s What I’m Talking About, which he billed as a sort of spiritual sequel to what’s arguably his most successful film to date. ‘I carefully called it a spiritual sequel to Dazed cause it’s not the same characters. If Dazed was my high school, this is my college,’ Linklater told Collider back in 2009. ‘It’s about a weekend in college in that time period. It’s funny… I think it’s the funniest thing I ever wrote.'”
Amanda Seyfried is joining Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, and Adam Driver in Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, reports Charlie Schmidlin at the Playlist. It’ll be about “an older, forty-something couple who cross paths with a younger, carefree couple.”
“Financing has come through and Jim Mickle, writer and director of Mulberry Street, Stakeland and We Are What We Are, and frequent collaborator Nick Damici can continue adapting Joe R. Lansdale’s Cold in July for the big screen,” announces Andrew Mack at Twitch.
In a report for Screen on 17 films presented at this year’s edition of Paris Projects, many of which we’ve already mentioned, Melanie Goodfellow notes that Cristi Puiu is working on The Manor House, “an adaptation of [Vladimir] Soloviov’s Tales about the Antichrist, set against 18th century hunting party.”
“After months of virtual silence on Spike Jonze’s long-awaited next film Her, there’s been a relative flurry of activity in the last 24 hours,” Oliver Lyttelton reported yesterday at the Playlist. Opening on November 20, Her has added Scarlett Johansson and Chris Pratt to a cast that already includes Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Samantha Morton, and Olivia Wilde
Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip to Italy, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reprising their roles in The Trip, starts shooting this week, reports Twitch‘s Todd Brown.
“Gérard Depardieu may have renounced his French nationality as a protest against high taxes and became a citizen of Russia instead, but on Tuesday he said he would play a Frenchman in a movie to be filmed in Moscow and in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya,” reports David M. Herszenhorn for the New York Times. Turquoise will also star Elizabeth Hurley.
“Barry Levinson has come on board to direct an untitled love story, set in Shanghai and Leningrad,” reports Variety‘s Dave McNary. “Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) is writing the screenplay, loosely based on Chinese author Bei La’s novel The Cursed Piano, but that title will not be used. The story is set against the escape from Leningrad by Jews and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and centers on a prodigy’s love for two women amid the chaos and drama of a world at war.”
For the Cannes Film Festival, Tarik Khaldi’s asked Un Certain Regard jury president Thomas Vinterberg about his previously mentioned adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd with Mathias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan. “It will happen,” says Vinterberg, “but we don’t know when. It’s moving all the time. People get fired, new ideas come in. But whatever happens, I have another project that is going to happen for sure. I’m working on a Danish film about drink, The Commune. It will be an ode to alcohol.”
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