Benedict Cumberbatch to Star in Boxing Drama GYPSY BOY
Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star in Gypsy Boy, the story of former bare-knuckle fighter and LGBT activist Mikey Walsh.
Based on Walsh's best-;selling memoirs, the film adaptation — announced in Toronto Friday — is being produced by Dee Koppang O'Leary (The Crown) and Kevin Loader (My Cousin Rachel, The Death of Stalin). Morgan Matthews, the two-time BAFTA-winning filmmaker whose debut was the acclaimed X+Y, is set to direct, with production starting in the summer of 2018.
Raised to be a bare-knuckle fighter in the Romany Gypsy community, Walsh was forced to leave his family and culture in 1996 because he was gay, writing about his experience in two autobiographies.
In 2014 and 2015 he was added to a list of the most influential British LGBT people.
Cumberbatch is set to play Walsh's father, Frank Walsh, who placed a pair of golden gloves on a chain around his newborn son's neck in the hope that he would maintain the family's fighting reputation. Casting is currently underway to find a young actor to play Mikey opposite Cumberbatch.
Guillermo del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER Wins Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival
The Shape of Water, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s lavish romantic fantasy about the uncanny attraction between a mute Baltimore cleaner and a mysterious aquatic creature, has taken the Golden Lion for best film in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The Fox Searchlight release prevailed in a diverse international field of 21 features, winning over a jury headed by American actress Annette Bening.
The world’s oldest film festival has crowned some contentious and controversial winners over the years, but this time, the press and the jury are in agreement: The Shape of Water was rapturously acclaimed by critics when it unspooled on the festival’s second day, and has been has been firmly installed as a Golden Lion frontrunner ever since.
“I believe in life, I believe in love and I believe in cinema,” declared a visibly moved del Toro as he accepted his award to a thundering standing ovation — his first festival honor since Pan’s Labyrinth took the 2006 Cannes jury prize. He arrives back on the Lido fresh from the film’s equally warmly received premieres in Telluride and Toronto, which further stoked Academy Awards buzz for his singular passion project. Fox Searchlight will open the film Stateside on Dec. 8, in the thick of awards season.
The festival’s second most prestigious honor, the Grand Jury Prize, went to Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz for Foxtrot — his first feature since scooping the Golden Lion for 2009’s autobiographical war drama Lebanon. This more expansive work is a tripartite reflection on grief and military culture. It is presently one of five films shortlisted to be Israel’s official Academy Awards submission.
Best Director honors went to Frenchman Xavier Legrand for his first feature Custody, a tough-minded examination of a couple’s divorce and its effect on their children, as custody negotiations turn acrimonious. An expansion of sorts on his Oscar-nominated 2013 short film Just Before Losing Everything, the film made Legrand the night’s one double winner: From a separate jury, he also nabbed the Lion of the Future award for best debut feature across the festival’s multiple sections.
Kamel El Basha, one of the two male co-leads in Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri’s politically resonant courtroom drama The Insult, won Best Actor. British veteran Charlotte Rampling, meanwhile, prevailed in a highly competitive Best Actress field: Seeing off well-received, Oscar-tipped turns by the likes of Frances McDormand and Sally Hawkins, she honored for her delicate, internalized work as a woman coping with her elderly husband’s shocking imprisonment in Italian director Andrea Pallaoro’s oblique character study Hannah.
Rounding out the Competition winners, indigenous Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton took the Special Jury Prize for his racially charged, visually resplendent outback western Sweet Country, while British-Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh won Best Screenplay, as widely expected, for the fast verbal fireworks of another Fox Searchlight project, the darkly comic revenge tale Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Finally, in something of a milestone, Venice become the first major film festival to hand out separate awards for virtual reality filmmaking, with John Landis presiding over the inaugural VR jury. Veteran artist-musician-filmmaker Laurie Anderson was among the prizewinners in this section with top honors going to American Eugene Y.K. Chung, whose acceptance speech served as a rallying cry for new cinematic formats. Congratulating Venice on its forward thinking, Chung continued: “This is where film was 100 years ago, and it’s going to be a really exciting journey. I can’t wait to see where it goes.”
Rumored Details on Why Director Colin Trevorrow Was Fired from STAR WARS: EPISODE IX
According to a ranking Hollywood movie insider with direct knowledge of the productions on both TheBook of Henry and Jurassic World (and who requested anonymity out of concern for sensitive ongoing business relationships), Colin Trevorrow’s firing from Star Wars: Episode IX may have come more directly as a consequence of being “difficult.”
“During the making of Jurassic World, he focused a great deal of his creative energies on asserting his opinion,” the executive explains. “But because he had been personally hired by Spielberg, nobody could say, ‘You’re fired.’ Once that film went through the roof and he chose to do Henry, [Trevorrow] was unbearable. He had an egotistical point of view— and he was always asserting that.”
Then, during preproduction on Episode IX, Trevorrow’s relationship with Lucasfilm top brass became reportedly "unmanageable" over the course of “repeated stabs at multiple drafts” of the script.
“When the reviews for Book of Henry came out, there was immediately conjecture that Kathy was going to dump him because they weren’t thrilled with working with him anyway,” the executive continues. “He’s a difficult guy. He’s really, really, really confident. Let’s call it that.”
Kathy, of course, is eight-time Academy Award–nominated Lucasfilm president/Star Wars brand manager Kathleen Kennedy, who found herself beneath the red-hot scrutiny of Movie Twitter in June after firing co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller from the Han Solo spinoff prequel. And in terms of that surfeit of self-belief, Trevorrow admitted to as much in an interview with Esquirein 2015. “Directors require a level of confidence that can border on the delusional,” Trevorrow said. “You have to push it right up to the edge of arrogance, but never cross the line.”
The decision to bounce him from the project ultimately fell to Kennedy, who, five years into her Lucasfilm tenure, is showing less and less compunction about firing or replacing directors she feels are temperamentally or creatively unsuited to the job, having also overseen the resignation of Fantastic Four director Josh Trank from another stand-alone Star Wars film in 2015.
“There’s one gatekeeper when it comes to Star Wars and it’s Kathleen Kennedy,” says a veteran movie producer, who has worked with the studio chief. “If you rub Kathleen Kennedy the wrong way — in any way — you’re out. You’re done. A lot of these young, new directors want to come in and say, ‘I want to do this. I want to do that.’ A lot of these guys — Lord and Miller, Colin Trevorrow — got very rich, very fast and believed a lot of their own hype. And they don’t want to play by the rules. They want to do shit differently. And Kathleen Kennedy isn’t going to fuck around with that.”
HAWAII FIVE-O's Daniel Dae Kim to Replace Ed Skrein in HELLBOY Reboot
Daniel Dae Kim, who recently left CBS’ Hawaii Five-0, is in negotiations to join the cast of Lionsgate and Millennium’s Hellboy reboot.
Kim will step into the role recently left vacant by Ed Skrein after an outcry over whitewashing a Asian-American character.
Kim will play Major Ben Daimio, a rugged military member of the bureau for paranormal research and defense who, due to a supernatural encounter, can turn into a jaguar when angered or in pain. The character is Japanese-American in the Hellboy comics by creator Mike Mignola.
Skrein had nabbed the role in August but, after a social media protest, made the unprecedented move to step down later that month.
David Harbour (Stranger Things) is starring in Hellboy, which reboots the franchise centered on the demonic hero from the Mignola comic books. Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall is helming the project.
Kim is Korean-American. And the actor is no stranger to standing up for his beliefs. In June, Kim quit Hawaii Five-0 after a salary dispute with CBS; he had been seeking equal pay to the show’s stars, Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan. His quitting, along with co-star Grace Park, left the show temporarily without Asian regulars.
Kim has been acting since the early 1990s and appeared on shows such as ER and Angel. He became a known quantity and star thanks to his breakout work on ABC’s Lost, and co-starred on Five-O since it launched in 2010.
IT Scares Up Historic $123.1 Million at the Box Office
There is nothing clownish about New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.' It, which grossed a massive $123.1 million from 4,103 theaters in its North American box-office debut over the weekend. The horror film is also a hit overseas, launching to record $62 million from 46 markets for a global start of $179.2 million.
On Sunday, It's opening weekend was an estimated $117.2 million, but a better-than-expected Sunday pushed the number higher. Also, Warners was being cautious because of Hurricane Irma.
The R-rated film adaptation of Stephen King's novel — about a group of misfit kids in the 1980s who battle the demonic Pennywise the Dancing Clown — jolted the domestic box office back to life after seven straight down weekends and the worst summer in recent memory.
It shattered numerous records, including landing the biggest start ever for a horror pic and for a King adaptation. And it's the biggest bow ever for the month of September, not to mention narrowly passing Spider-Man: Homecoming ($117 million) to score the third-best domestic debut of the year so far behind Beauty and the Beast ($174.8 million) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($146.2 million). The movie's Friday take alone was bigger than the previous September crown holder, Hotel Transylvania 2, which pulled in $48.5 million for the three days.
Put another way: It, directed by Argentine filmmaker Andres Muschietti (Mama) and costing a modest $35 million to produce, turned into a movie for all audiences and not just younger horror fans. Roughly 65 percent of ticket buyers were over the age of 25. The genre can often skew heavily female, but males turned out in force this time (49 percent).
New Details on IT Sequel; Bill Skarsgard and Child Actors to Return
While Chapter One took place entirely in 1988 and 1989, Chapter Two will be set in the present day, featuring the Losers Club as grown-ups, reunited by their blood-oath at the end to fight Pennywise again if he resurrects in 27 years.
Director Andy Muschietti (best known for Mama, a film King himself named in EW as one of his favorites of 2013) says the second film will still feature the younger kids we’ve come to know and love. They turn up as memories of the adult versions of the Losers Club.
“On the second movie, that dialogue between timelines will be more present,” he said. “If we’re telling the story of adults, we are going to have flashbacks that take us back to the ‘80s and inform the story in the present day.”
Barbara Muschietti, the director’s sister and producing partner, tells EW that as of Monday morning, It: Chapter Two still does not have the official greenlight from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros., but the writing and development of the film has already been underway.
And there’s little to no doubt now that it will move forward. (The studio executives just need to stop celebrating long enough to push the button, finalize the deals, and get things moving — or “floating,” in this case.)
“The hope is we’ll find the best way soon, because it’s also important for Andy to get flashbacks with the kids, who are growing very fast,” she says. “They are an important component in the next film.”
Andy Muschietti stresses that the kid elements in Chapter Two won’t just be brief throwbacks, but integral to the events that unfold for the adults. “They’re a very big part of the action,” he says.
We do know one key plot point that doesn’t spoil Chapter Two, but does reveal a little about where the sequel will start. Andy Muschietti previously told EW a little about plans for one of the main characters – the one who doesn’t escape.
As those who’ve read King’s book know, Chosen Jacobs’ character Mike Hanlon, one of the only black kids in the town of Derry, is the member of the Losers who voluntarily stays behind. While they all go as far away as they can get, he serves as a watchman, despite suffering some of the worst torment from the town’s racist bullies.
Hanlon is physically one of the strongest of the Losers when they’re kids, and demonstrates a loyalty and fearlessness that inspires the others. But Andy Muschietti said he will pay a high price for his devotion, one that weakens him mentally and physically by the time the others return.
While King’s Hanlon was a mild-mannered librarian, collecting and recording details for their town’s bloody history, the movie’s version of Mike will turn out to have a heartbreaking history of his own – much of it fallout from immersing himself in the study of that nameless evil dwelling beneath.
“My idea of Mike in the second movie is quite darker from the book,” the filmmaker said. “I want to make his character the one pivotal character who brings them all together, but staying in Derry took a toll with him. I want him to be a junkie actually. A librarian junkie. When the second movie starts, he’s a wreck.”
Muschietti said he wanted to “infuse more agency to him in those 30 years we don’t visit.”
“He’s not just the collector of knowledge of what Pennywise has been doing in Derry. He will bear the role of trying to figure out how to defeat him. The only way he can do that is to take drugs and alter his mind.”
Hanlon’s mind-altering exploration mirrors a part of King’s novel that was cut from the first movie, when the Loser kids undertake a Native American ritual to get a glimpse of the supernatural plane, bringing them into contact with entities that help them stop the creature behind Pennywise.
“It resonates with what the kids do when they go to the smokehouse in the Barrens,” Andy Muschietti says. “By inhaling these fumes from the fire they have visions of It, and the origin of It, and the falling fire in the sky that crashed into Derry millions of years ago. We’ve brought that to Mike, by the end of those 30 years Mike has figured out the Ritual of Chüd.”
King’s Ritual of Chüd is more of a Lovecraftian spell, an old-world mysticism that involves a duel of imagination between the shapeshifting trickster and the children (now adults) who want to end It once and for all.
But even as Hanlon sounds the alarm to his old friends that they must return, his addiction becomes just another demon he has to battle.
When the Losers return, he won’t be facing it alone.
Readers of King’s novel know that in the opening chapters, we learn that one of the Losers can’t bring himself to fulfill his promise to return. Instead, when Hanlon contacts him to say Pennywise has come back, he dies by suicide.
In the book, this sets the stakes. Whatever the adults are returning to face, it must be so horrific – and their then-unknown past so scarring – that one of them would rather die that go through it again.
That character is Stan Uris, played by Wyatt Oleff, who was celebrating his Bar Mitzvah in the first film, while also enduring cruelty from local bullies for being Jewish. So it’s not that Stan is weak, he is just wounded after the climactic clash with Pennywise in ways the others aren’t.
“There is something in the future for him, taking his own life, that finds its seed in this film,” Andy Muschietti said. “He is the one who doesn’t want to accept what’s going on. And being the one who didn’t want to participate he gets the worst part.”
Those who’ve seen the movie know the part: deep in Derry’s sewer system, Stan separates from the group and comes face-to-uh-something with It in the form of the creepy woman from the painting in his father’s study.
When his friends finally find him, It has its comb-toothed jaws around his head and is sucking Stan’s face into its mouth. Although he survives, the memory and the traumatic stress he lives with makes him decide it’s a horror he can’t confront again.
“The thing about Stan is he doesn’t bend,” says Barbara Muschietti. “He breaks.”
One actor has definitely been locked for the sequel.
“We got Pennywise!” Barbara Muschietti says.
“We’ve got Pennywise and it’s Bill Skarsgard,” her brother echoes.
Full Trailer for Alexander Payne's DOWNSIZING Starring Matt Damon
When scientists discover how to shrink humans to five inches tall as a solution to over-population, Paul (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) decide to abandon their stressed lives in order to get small and move to a new downsized community — a choice that triggers life-changing adventures. In theaters December 22.
Stephen King Short Story SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN Heading to Big Screen
The work of author Stephen King continues to be hotter than it’s been since the 1980s.
Bread & Circuses Entertainment, Voltage Pictures and Das films are teaming up to adapt King’s short story Suffer the Little Children.
The story, one of King’s earliest, centers on an elderly teacher who slowly and tragically comes to the realization that her students are not quite what they seem.
Sean Carter, who has the Bella Thorne horror thriller Keep Watching in the can, will write and direct the adaptation, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Carter will expand the story while also building on the alien qualities rooted in the story’s foundation.
James Franco is Tommy Wiseau in the Official Trailer for THE DISASTER ARTIST
Based on Greg Sestero’s best-selling tell-all about the making of Tommy Wiseau's cult-classic disasterpiece The Room (“The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made”). The Disaster Artist, starring James Franco, Dave Franco, and Seth Rogen. In Theaters December 1.
J.J. Abrams Returning to Write and Direct STAR WARS: EPISODE IX
J.J. Abrams is returning to a galaxy far, far away. The Force Awakens director will step in to direct Star Wars: Episode IX after the exit of former director, Colin Trevorrow.
“With The Force Awakens, J.J. delivered everything we could have possibly hoped for, and I am so excited that he is coming back to close out this trilogy,” said Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy in a statement.
Trevorrow left the project earlier this month. Abrams will co-write the film with Chris Terrio.
According to sources, Trevorrow exited the project after issues with the script persisted throughout development, with the director taking multiple stabs at different drafts. Eventually, he and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy's working relationship had become unmanageable.
Jack Thorne, the British scribe who wrote the upcoming Julia Roberts-Jacob Tremblay movie Wonder, was tapped to work on the script for the movie, which is the supposed end to the Skywalker Saga.
In their Sept. 5 statement, Lucasfilm and Disney said, "Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways on Star Wars: Episode IX. Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process, but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ. We wish Colin the best and will be sharing more information about the film soon."
This move marks the third time a director has been replaced on a Star Wars project. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were taken off the Han Solo standalone with only a few weeks left in production, and later replace with Ron Howard. Gareth Edwards handled all of the principal photography on 2016's Rogue One, but the movie's extensive reshoots were helmed by seasoned director Tony Gilroy.
Disney made a slew of changes to its upcoming calendar on Tuesday, including pushing back the release of Star Wars: Episode IX by seven months.Episode IX will now open in theaters Dec. 20, 2019, instead of May 24, 2019.
Zack Snyder Shares First Look at New Short Film SNOW STEAM IRON
Following Zack Snyder’s distressing departure from Justice League, the director released a teaser video for his next project, a stylized short film dubbed “Snow Steam Iron.”
“What can you do with your talented friends & family, no money and a weekend?” Snyder tweeted to his half-million followers last week. The answer is a new short coming to Vero, the social media platform he took to during production on Justice League.
WONDER WOMAN's Jason Fuchs to Write ROBOTECH for Sony
Sony’s adaptation of Robotech found its director in Andy Muschietti back in July, and now Jason Fuchs is on board to write the screenplay for the feature based on the popular ’80s anime TV series.
Fuchs, who co-wrote the story for Warner Bros’ Wonder Woman with Zack Snyder and Allan Heinsberg, will be working with Muschetti to create the new Rototech from scratch, I’ve learned.
The high-priority Robotech takes place in an era when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology of an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific island. The residents of the third planet from the sun are now using that converted tech to fight off an impending alien invasion – aka big tentpole stuff.
Based on the Harmony Gold USA and Japan’s Tatsunoko Productions TV show, the big-screen version will be produced by Barbara Muschietti, Andy’s sister and creative partner; and 300 producers Mark Canton; and Gianni Nunnari.
Having made his blockbuster bones with Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012, Fuchs saw his Pan script hit the Black List the following year. Directed by Joe Wright, the Peter Pan prequel of sorts came out in 2015.
First Trailer for Jaume Collet-Serra's THE COMMUTER Starring Liam Neeson
In this action-packed thriller, Liam Neeson plays an insurance salesman, Michael, on his daily commute home, which quickly becomes anything but routine. After being contacted by a mysterious stranger, Michael is forced to uncover the identity of a hidden passenger on his train before the last stop. As he works against the clock to solve the puzzle, he realizes a deadly plan is unfolding and is unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy. One that carries life and death stakes, for himself and his fellow passengers. In theaters January 12, 2018.
Storm and Negasonic Teenage Warhead Team Up for TRAGEDY GIRLS
Best friends Sadie and McKayla are on a mission to boost their social media fandom as amateur crime reporters hot on the trail of a deranged local serial killer. After they manage to capture the killer and secretly hold him hostage, they realize the best way to get scoops on future victims would be to, you know, murder people themselves. As the @TragedyGirls become an overnight sensation and panic grips their small town, can their friendship survive the strain of national stardom? Will they get caught? Will their accounts get verified? In theaters 10/20/2017.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
