On any given day, there may be three or four announcements of note regarding projects in the works. But once Cannes opens, they come tumbling, hour after hour. Our first item today, though, doesn’t come from the Croisette, but rather from Phaidon (whose articles go curiously un-bylined). The publishing house talks with artist JR, whose recent cover for the New York Times Magazine has been reblogged on four out of five tumblrs. “JR’s 2014 project, Unframed – Ellis Island, brought those long departed sickly souls back to life, by posting vintage photographs of the patients and staff of the island’s hospital onto the derelict walls of the facility. JR followed up this with a short film, The Ghosts of Ellis Island, with Robert De Niro in the lead role, and a script by the Oscar-winning writer Eric Roth (Forest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).” In the film, now in post-production, De Niro plays the ghost of an immigrant who was never allowed entry into the United States.
In Deadline‘s new story on Cannes’ Market, the Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth found a brief mention of deals Amazon’s made with Jim Jarmusch and Terry Gilliam. “But what could those projects be? Last we heard from Jarmusch, he had a script ready to go about a bus driver and poet in Paterson, New Jersey.” And Jarmusch says he’s “in the early stages of exploring the possibilities of a kind of electronic score, which I never used before.” As for Gilliam, “we can only imagine (and hope) that Amazon is the savior of his forever gestating and frequently delayed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”
“Gael García Bernal will co-star in Neruda, Pablo Larraín’s follow-up to Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner The Club,” reports Variety‘s John Hopewell. “Chile’s Luis Gnecco, who stars in Profugos, the hit narco TV series Larraín directed for HBO Latin America, will portray Neruda. García Bernal is playing Inspector Oscar Peluchoneau, who organized the police manhunt for the Nobel-winning Chilean poet.”
Bérénice Bejo is set to star in Marco Bellocchio’s Sweet Dreams, “based on the eponymous autobiographical best-selling novel by Italian journalist Massimo Gramellini about coming to terms with the trauma of his mother’s premature death when he was nine,” reports Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli. “The book sold more than a million copies in Italy.”
Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are slated to star in Escobar. Georg Szalai in the Hollywood Reporter: “Based on Virginia Vallejo’s 2008 best-selling Spanish-language memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, Fernando Leon de Aranoa (A Perfect Day, Mondays in the Sun, Familia) will write and direct the biopic of the Colombian drug lord.”
Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) will direct Anne Hathaway in Colossal, which, according to THR‘s Pamela McClintock, has been “described as Transformers versus Adaptation and Godzilla meets Being John Malkovich; Hathaway will play Gloria, an ordinary woman who, after losing her job and her fiancé, decides to leave her life in New York to move back to her hometown. But when news reports surface that a giant lizard is destroying the city of Tokyo, Gloria gradually comes to realize that she is strangely connected to these far-off events via the power of her mind. In order to prevent further destruction, Gloria needs to determine why her seemingly insignificant existence has such a colossal effect on the fate of the world.”
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“Marvel is courting Selma filmmaker Ava DuVernay to direct one of its diverse superhero movies,” reports TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider. “Insiders suggest that Black Panther, due first in July 2018, is the most likely possibility.”
“Noomi Rapace will portray opera singer Maria Callas in the feature biopic Callas with Niki Caro directing.” Dave McNary has details in Variety.
“Natalie Portman and Lily Rose Depp, the daughter of actor Johnny Depp, will play spiritualist sisters in Planetarium, a 1930s-set drama to be directed by French helmer Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central),” reports Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy.
From THR‘s Alex Ritman: “Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne have been lined up to take the leads in [Luc Besson’s] big-screen adaptation of the science fiction novel Valerian.”
“Reese Witherspoon is looking to leave the disappointment of Hot Pursuit in the dust, and is attached to star in Pale Blue Dot.” THR‘s Borys Kit tells that the story “centers on a married astronaut who returns to Earth after a mission and begins an affair with a fellow astronaut.”
“Rachel Weisz is to star in and produce $15m kidnapping thriller Snatchback, from Dredd director Pete Travis,” reports Screen‘s Andreas Wiseman. Also: “Nicole Kidman is in advanced talks to join John Cameron Mitchell’s anticipated comedy-romance How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which is readying for an autumn shoot in the UK…. Hedwig and the Angry Inch director Mitchell and Philippa Goslett (Little Ashes) have written the screenplay, which is adapted from Neil Gaiman’s short story of the same name in which an alien [Elle Fanning] touring the galaxy breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants of the most dangerous place in the universe: the London suburb of Croydon.”
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