With high-stakes financial drama Margin Call and Robert Redford-powered survival tale All Is Lost under his belt, J.C. Chandor is settling into his position as one of Hollywood's most exciting new filmmakers. Up next, he has a period crime thriller titled A Most Violent Year, which stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain as an immigrant and his wife struggling to expand their New York business in the crime-ridden winter of 1981 while the rampant corruption of their surroundings threatens to drag them down. That project has Oscar written all over it, but Chandor isn't waiting around to see how it performs - Deadline reports that he's already lining up Deepwater Horizon as his next effort.
A film adaptation of the popular manga series Death Note has been brewing for some time now, and last we heard about the project, Iron Man 3 helmer Shane Black was working with his The Nice Guys co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry on a new iteration of the script. The movie is set up at Warner Bros., which has a strong relationship with Black thanks to the Lethal Weapon franchise and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, so his involvement seemed like a done deal. However, now we're hearing that Black might no longer be involved with Death Note, and his replacement is none other than Milk director Gus Vant Sant.
Warner Bros. has closed a deal to finance Iron Man 3 director Shane Black's upcoming noir film The Nice Guys, in which Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are set to star. Black has a long-standing relationship with Warner Bros. thanks to the Lethal Weapon franchise, which he created for the studio back in the '80s, and Black's directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, so word that the studio wants to work with Black again doesn't come as much of a surprise.
Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro has made no secret over the years of his desire to do an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's influential horror story At the Mountains of Madness, but the dream project's risky requirements seem to make it fall through the cracks every time del Toro gets close to reeling in a studio. Universal backed away from it last year, amid buzz of difficulties with del Toro's preferred budget and R-rating. However, now that Legendary Pictures are collaborating with Universal on the filmmaker's Pacific Rim 2, del Toro is hopeful that he can bring the project over to Legendary - even if he has to tone it down to a PG-13. However, del Toro's preference for At the Mountains of Madness, as it turns out, is to do two separate cuts in order to please both the studio and horror-lovers in the audience.
Next February, actress Dakota Johnson will likely be launched to Twilight-era Kristen Stewart-esque levels of mega-stardom when she appears as Anastasia Steele in the hotly anticipated BDSM romance Fifty Shades of Grey, based on the runaway bestseller by E.L. James. With legions of fans to please and her career to think of, Johnson has every reason to be thinking about her future as an actress past Fifty Shades - and now, she's locked down another book-to-film adaptation sure to endear her to a very different crowd, with word that she'll star in Forever, Interrupted.
If you consider yourself a Trekkie, you likely had a pretty strong opinion one way or the other when J.J. Abrams, who helmed Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, exited the third film in order to do Star Wars: Episode VII, leaving producer Roberto Orci to take the reins on Star Trek 3. Though Orci is a heavyweight producer in Hollywood, having been involved with both Star Trek films, The Amazing Spider-Man franchise and Now You See Me (to name a few of many), he's never before directed a film. Naturally, Paramount wants to be cautious in handing him one of its most bankable series, but now it turns out that Orci directing is still not a done deal.
With Gotham and Gracepoint, among others, on its schedule, Fox has perhaps the most enviable fall line-up of any primetime network. So, TV aficionados, unpin your calendar from the corkboard and take out a pen - we now know what Fox's plan is for launching its new series and premiering new seasons of others. You can check out it all out below.
After graduating from the HBO series Big Love with roles in YA adaptation Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters and horror comedy Stage Fright, Douglas Smith is continuing to rise in Hollywood with news that he's landed a supporting role in Paramount's hotly anticipated franchise reboot Terminator: Genesis.
Sitting on my couch watching the credits roll on Denis Villeneuve's mind-bending Enemy, I found myself in a state of mild catatonia, internally racing to piece it all together but externally still transfixed, eyes glued to the screen and ears keenly listening for any clues as to the film's greater meaning within the cheery strains of The Walker Brothers' "After the Lights Go Out." Now, hours later, I'm still not completely out of Enemy - there's a part of me still absorbed in its narrative, still puzzling over that bizarre ending and all the almost-as-strange stuff that came before. And what's more, I have a feeling that's exactly what Villeneuve and writer Javier Gullón (providing his own spin on the late, great José Saramago's novel The Double) intended.
Many who hear about Affluenza may at first assume that the movie is a look inside the thoroughly depressing case of Ethan Couch, a Texas teen who drove drunk and caused a crash, killing four and injuring two. During his trial, a psychologist argued Couch was a victim of "affluenza," as the product of rich parents who never set boundaries for him or taught him to understand the relationship between actions and consequences. The case made national headlines when the judge sentenced him to ten years of probation and therapy in a cushy rehab facility - a sentence that defied basic ideas of both logic and justice with its leniency.
